Steve Yeager

The number of people packing Nevada’s prisons is growing so fast that, without significant changes, the state may soon face the ugly choice of either paying other states to house the overflow or building new facilities, both at significant taxpayer expense.

While the national prison population has fallen 7 percent since 2009, Nevada’s went the other way, increasing by 7 percent. It might be tempting to attribute Nevada’s increasing prison population to keeping violent criminals off the street and away from society, but the data tell a different story.

For the past four months, the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice has been examining trends in our prison population over the last decade, and we’ve found that the bulk of the growth in our prisons is driven by increases in the number of individuals returned to prison for probation or parole violations, like failing a drug test or breaking curfew. Moreover, we saw that two-thirds of people coming into our prisons have been sentenced for nonviolent offenses, like drug and property crimes. Eight of the top 10 crimes landing individuals behind bars are nonviolent and three of those are drug-related.

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Equally as startling as the overall growth rate is the absence of alternatives to incarceration for people whose crimes stem from unmet behavioral health needs. Over the past 10 years, the number of offenders entering prison with mental health needs has increased by 35 percent. Our jails and prisons have become de facto treatment facilities, struggling to meet increasing demands for services they were never designed to provide.

Prison growth is costing us dearly. Nevada’s annual corrections budget has grown 14 percent in the last decade, reaching $347 million in the current fiscal year. Despite this massive investment, the prison system is not giving taxpayers their money’s worth – 29 percent of offenders return to prison within three years of their release. This level of spending has left us unable to pay for community-based resources that have proven far more effective at reducing recidivism and protecting public safety than long prison sentences.

But there is reason for hope. Nevada has an opportunity to join 34 states that have reduced their prison populations while also continuing to see their crime rates decline by implementing policies and procedures grounded in evidence and research rather than fear and anecdote. These strategies have included improving alternatives to incarceration that combine supervision and treatment and shifting resources that help police and courts respond to individuals with substance abuse and mental health needs by connecting them to treatment.

As the ACAJ begins to develop policy changes to recommend to the Legislature, our overriding priority is public safety. Letting people out of prison just to save money is not smart. But neither is incarcerating people because we have insufficient alternatives in the community. We must find a middle ground which ensures our expensive prison resources are available for those that are serious, violent offenders and develop and fund alternatives for those that can be safely managed in the community.

Steve Yeager represents District 9 in the Nevada State Assembly and serves as speaker pro tempore, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice.