Why is Nevada putting murderers in cells with nonviolent offenders?

By Rick Lax

Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011 | 4:40 p.m.

Carl Guilford is 18. He confessed to smothering his 6-year-old cousin to death with a blanket. Said the devil made him do it. And, according to Guilford, when the task was complete, the devil told him, “Well done.”

Clark County put Guilford in a cell with another guy—a 39-year-old being held on child porn possession charges. Guess what happened? Guilford killed that guy, too. Said the devil made him do it. (At least, that’s Guilford’s current story. At first Guilford claimed that the child-porn guy grabbed his butt and said, “I’m going to take that”—claiming that the killing was self-defense, in other words.)

For many years, Nevada has had one of the fastest-growing prison populations in the country. According to the Pew Center on the States, a division of The Pew Charitable Trusts, 1 in 48 Nevada adults are under some form of correctional control. And for more than half of those adults (54 percent), the correctional control takes the form of jail or prison.

In all, incarceration costs us about $250 million a year.

You know you’ve got too many nonviolent drug offenders locked up when you can’t even get separate cells for the Satan-possessed murderers. Really, this 39-year-old’s death should serve as a wake-up call. We’ve got too many people in our jails. We’ve got to bring the number down.

If we don’t, devil-driven murderers may do the job for us.