Commission votes to ask state for $900,000 to relieve jail overcrowding

By Cy Ryan

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013 | 7:20 p.m.

After hearing myriad complaints about delays in sentencing, the state Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice voted to ask the Legislative Interim Finance Commission to dip into its emergency fund for an estimated $900,000 to hire more pre-sentence writers.

Inmates have been stacked up in the Clark County jail because the state can’t produce pre-sentencing reports to judges in the required 45-day time limit.

The 2013 Legislature approved a law that the state Parole and Probation Office submit these reports to the judge 45 days after conviction. But Bernard Curtis, chief of the state Division of Parole and Probation, said the lawmakers in the closing hours of the session deleted the money needed to comply with the law.

Chuck Callaway, police director in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told the commission the jail was overcrowded because of these delays, and it is costing Clark County millions of dollars to keep the inmates in the jail longer.