When Nevada’s new prisons chief took over, he made it clear he was going to change the system.
Since James Dzurenda became director of the Department of Corrections in April 2016, he has traveled the state, combed through Nevada laws and met with lawmakers.
And he made several attempts to change how our prison system works in the legislative session that ended last month.
The question is, did state lawmakers listen?
Governor Sandoval vetoed Assembly Bill 303 that would have banned the state from using private prisons. What did you think of the idea of banning private prisons?
I'm caught in, it's like a pickle. Our population numbers are increasing. Right now, we're at 13,750 inmates that are incarcerated in the state that keeps going up. I can tell you next week and it will be higher. That's my biggest concern. So when you've run out of room, which we had, you start using program areas to use for housing... If you start looking at how corrections really works to change behaviors. How it really works to reduce recidivism and victimization in the community most of these programs we're doing have proven to reduce victimization. If you're taking away program space, now you're reducing our programs that we know are going to work.
Privatization, I don't want to. I don't like to, but if I have to it's one of those things I need to do because I got to get my numbers down for safety and for use for programs.
How are you reducing prison population?
To have a successful program, you have to have everyone feeling and being safe. If staff doesn't feel safe, then the inmates pick up on that and they don't feel safe. If inmates aren't feeling safe they're not going to go to programs. They're not going to go to a proven program to help with their behavior or addictions because they're afraid that they're going to be approached by gangs, that they're going to be pushed to do things by gangs. So they would rather just stay out of it and stay in their cells.
That is where the 200 we sent out of state are going to become important because if I could reduce our population of those 200 that are the most dangerous and those that are most gang-affiliated, gang leaders, the ones that are actually going after these inmates to make things unsafe. If I could show that I could move them out of state and make sure those inmates know that if they get involved with gang activity, they may go out of state too. That's going to reduce violence. It's going to reduce our gang activity, which will help get things safer. So inmates feel more comfortable going to programs so they can change their behaviors and do better.
Assembly Bill 316, sponsored by Assemblyman Tyrone Thompson, would provide re-entry training to some prisoners three months before they are released. That sounds like it could be a big change:
Personally, I think it needs to be longer than that... Senator Thompson's bill really does emphasize the need for doing rehabilitation and trying to change behaviors sooner not later.
We also got a grant -- a second chance re-entry grant from the federal government which gives us about $3 million over a three-year period to increase those programs, to actually do the rehabilitation piece sooner and the re-entry piece. So, we can make sure these programs did work. Because there are a lot of programs that rely on other programs so if you doing it for 90 days some of those programs won't be successful. You really need up to two years on programs.
Assembly Bill 421 will require the state Department of Health and Human Services to work with local sheriffs and police in Nevada to provide steady medical care to inmates in prison and upon release. What’s that going to mean for the state’s prison system?
What is going to tie into this that is going to work perfect is medical records. Mental health and medical records being able to put them on electronically... with this legislation, they approved us and the governor's support for electronic health records is going to connect us with Health and Human Services with the medical and mental health needs of our offenders when they go back into the community. The worst thing we can do is put some of these really violent mental health inmates back into the community with no communications with Health and Human Services and having no history of medical or mental health, psychotropic medication history, psychotherapy history and give them back to the community because they will fail and they will start victimizing our community.
Assembly Bill 420, sponsored by Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, allows the use of a phone, cell phone or computer for certain visits and correspondence. And I think this is just internal use—not with the outside world is that right?
This was a really difficult bill to explain to the public and to the legislators because there are a lot of misconceptions about this bill. The tablets that the inmates are going to use for programs and for education they're not the same as the tablets we have in the community. These inmates cannot communicate with each other. It has to go to a Department of Corrections system. The system will communicate with everything else. The system will allow them to communicate with everything else. They can communicate with a teacher if we let them.
If we have inmates who have been incarcerated for 20 years, I can guarantee you they've never even seen an iPad. The big thing we're trying to do with our re-entry centers is trying to get inmates jobs because if we can get them jobs, get them situated, get them housing they will be more successful and take it way from prisons, less victims in the community by making them more successful.
If you go to a job today, how are you going to apply? 99 percent of the companies we send them to you have to apply online. If the inmates don't know how to use that, they're going to be unsuccessful right off the bat.
James Dzurenda, director, Nevada Department of Corrections