Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Legislature:

With eye toward savings, Assembly takes up prison terms

Southern Desert Correctional Center

Steve Marcus

The Southern Desert Correctional Center in Indian Springs is shown in this file photo.

Tick Segerblom

Tick Segerblom

A first-time offender for illegal drug possession in Nevada is often placed on probation. But if he fails to pay restitution, leaves the state without permission or skips a drug test, he could land in prison.

Then taxpayers are saddled with his expensive housing and supervision while he is denied the help he really needs. That’s why state lawmakers are considering legislation that could save millions of dollars annually by diverting eligible nonviolent criminal offenders into substance-abuse treatment.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee this morning is set to discuss Assembly Bill 93, which would give judges the discretion to put certain offenders into intense drug or alcohol addiction treatment within prison facilities, but not as inmates.

The difference is enormous because those segregated from inmates must pay for treatment and supervision. If they cannot fully repay the costs, they must make up the difference through community service.

The bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, said the program would be designed to serve at least 400 offenders, including at least 250 in Southern Nevada. At about $20,000 a year per inmate, taxpayers spend $8 million annually to keep 400 individuals in prison. AB93 proposes spending as little as $250,000 annually for the state Health and Human Services Department to treat the participants. Although the cost may eventually double, according to a preliminary estimate, the savings over incarceration would still help the state grapple with a massive budget deficit.

“One goal is to save money because there are a lot of people incarcerated who don’t need to be in prison,” Segerblom said. “To have some of these nonviolent offenders sit in prison for one year, five years, 10 years at $20,000 a year doesn’t make any sense.”

Although most nonviolent offenders don’t serve as long as 10 years in prison, it is possible for a graffiti artist, food-stamp abuser or seller of a false trademark to get up to four years in prison. Stealing something that’s worth at least $250 but less than $2,500 can draw a five-year sentence.

As of Feb. 28, Nevada had 12,444 inmates. The Corrections Department found that, as of June 2009 — the latest available figures — 23 percent of male inmates and 49 percent of females were behind bars for property or drug crimes. Nonviolent offenders typically come from those categories.

If AB93 becomes law, it would depart from Nevada’s long-standing reputation as a tough-on-crime state with one of the nation’s highest per capita incarceration rates.

The Sun reported in 2008, based on a computer-assisted analysis of national data from 2006, that Nevada had the nation’s ninth highest incarceration rate, but ranked 47th in probation. That means the state infrequently uses alternative sentencing that is more heavily used in most other states.

Supporting AB93 in concept are Nevada District Attorneys Association lobbyist Sam Bateman, who is a chief deputy district attorney in Clark County, and Jeff Mohlenkamp, deputy director of support services for the Corrections Department.

“Generally, we support the concept of the bill to the extent that it gives us more options instead of just sending probation violators to prison,” Bateman said of his association.

But Bateman and Mohlenkamp stopped short of full support until all their concerns have been resolved.

For Mohlenkamp, issues include the potential costs to the Corrections Department of segregating the substance-abuse treatment participants from inmates and whether the department could discipline the participants, if necessary, and return them to court.

“The department supports the concept of having a program that allows judges to determine that technical probation violators don’t have to go to prison,” Mohlenkamp said. “It would also help keep our prison population count down.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which issued a scathing report last week on living conditions in state prisons, supports AB93 and any legislative effort to reduce prison time for nonviolent offenders.

“A lot of studies show that prisons have a criminalizing effect rather than a rehabilitating effect,” said Maggie McLetchie, its legal director. “There will be some startup money needed for any alternative sentencing program but it will save money in the long run by reducing recidivism rates.”

The ACLU argues prison space should be reserved for the most serious and violent offenders. To reduce the prison population, it recommended the state implement an intermediate sanctions program — such as proposed in AB93 — and expand community-based treatment programs.

Aside from quoting Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, as saying that Nevada ranked last in the country in funding for substance-abuse treatment, the ACLU reported 70 percent of the state’s probationers and parolees wait a month before starting outpatient treatment. During that time they are “likely to relapse, violate conditions of release and return to prison,” the report said.

The ACLU also recommended prison populations be reduced by narrowing Nevada’s Category B felonies, which carry prison terms of one to 20 years and are the second most severe of the state’s felonies. It said that category, which covers more than 200 crimes, should cover only the most serious of those crimes.

Rebecca Paddock, a county public defender who wrote the report, said many offenders are given lengthy prison sentences for crimes such as shoplifting that should draw lesser sentences.

“The statutory language for a Category B felony is so broad it can cover someone taking sunglasses out of a car,” Paddock said. “These type of cases clog the criminal justice system.”

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