Safety and Sentencing Prison Program Crime Survivors for Community Safety Beyond Barriers

Nevada

VOICE Project in Nevada

The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) is the VOICE Project partner in the state of Nevada. PLAN’s work on this project is an outgrowth of their historic work in the 2003 Nevada legislature which resulted in the passage of AB55, a bill that restored civil rights to first-time, non-violent offenders.

Basic Facts About Prison and Nevada

Number of Prisons 9 prisons, 10 conservation camps, and 1 restitution center administered by the Department of Corrections. There was 1 prison operated for profit in Las Vegas, but it was transferred back to the NDOC in 2004.
Number of Prisoners
NDOC reported to the Governor that they expected to have 10,800 prison beds in FY 2005.
Women Prisoners NDOC does not provide this information on their website
State Population 2,241,154 (based on 2003 figures from the US Census)
DOC Budget
Budget information for 2005 is on the web at  http://budget.state.nv.us/bb0607/ BB0507DOC.pdf
DOC website
http://www.doc.nv.gov/ Their site has a prisoner database, visitor guidelines, but not very many statistics or budget information.
Death PenaltyNevada uses the death penalty. The DOC website reports that in 2004 there were 88 men and 1 woman sentence to death.
Newspapers
The main newspapers in the state that cover stories related to prisons and Corrections policy are the Las Vegas Review Journal and the Las Vegas Sun. You can see a fairly complete list of Nevada newspapers here.

NV: Nevada Shortchanging Rehabilitation Programs

Nevada Assemblyman Bernie Anderson stated that Nevada is spending a lot of money on new prisons and is shortchanging programs that might rehabilitate people. Assemblyman Anderson is the vice chairman of the Assembly Select Committee on Corrections, Parole and Probation. This is a new legislative committee that has many responsibilities, including looking into sentencing alternatives for nonviolent crimes.

NV: More Money For Corrections Officers

Nevada Director of Corrections Glen Whorton asked the governor for more money to hire 264 more corrections officers. That total would increase the number of corrections officers in the Department of Corrections by 20% and cost an additional $27.5 million over the next two years. That number is in addition to the $50 million the governor already suggested should be spent on the prison system over the next two year budget cycle.

NV: Planning Board Recommends Prisons not Schools

The Nevada Public Works Board recommended in September that the state spend half of the public money set aside for construction projects on prisons.  The state has $764 million to spend on capital projects, and the Public Works Board suggested that $360 million of that should be spent on prisons.
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