February 29, 2008
Nevada: Prison crowding targeted in state
Inmates at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City will begin moving into a 240-bed modular housing unit Monday as part of the state's efforts to ease crowding in the bulging prison population, officials said Thursday.
The move coincides with the release of an unprecedented national report from the Pew Center on the States showing that one out of every 99.1 American adults is in jail or prison, the highest ratio of any country in the world. "We're at capacity and more," said Greg Smith, a planning specialist with the state Department of Corrections. "We've had to utilize some public areas such as classrooms and foyers (within prisons) for housing. We are very much looking forward to the new buildings."
Nevada's penal system, a $296 million annual institution, is designed to handle 12,753 inmates, Smith said. It currently holds 12,959, or roughly one of every 200 state residents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Nevada Department of Corrections.
LINK - RGJ.com (Reno Gazette-Journal)
