Stir numbers

In 1970, 23 judges from around the nation volunteered to spend a day and night in Nevada’s maximum security prison in Carson City. They emerged from the experience taken aback by homosexuality and discontent in the institution and said they were returning to their home states committed to prison reform. Kansas Judge E. Newton Vickers said, “The state of Nevada would do a great service today to get two bulldozers out there and tear the damn thing to the ground.”

The facility, called Nevada State Prison, started out as the Warm Springs Hotel and was the meeting place for the Nevada Territorial Legislature. In 1864, it was purchased by that same legislature to become a state prison, which it has been since then—though in 1880 the state considered turning it into a mental asylum. The older portions of the prison are now mainly used for administrative purposes. Since the judges visited in 1970, the prison has not been bulldozed, but it has been expanded and improved, with modular units to the east—though most news photos still show the more colorful older section as representative of the prison.

The state built a new maximum security prison in Ely, but its remote location—it was built to try to beef up the Ely economy after the shutdown of a nearby open pit copper mine—makes it a definite second choice for prisoners’ families. Family visits are considered helpful in avoiding prison discontent. The Ely facility experienced a riot last year.

Earlier in the current state budget crisis, Gov. Jim Gibbons proposed shutting down the Carson max. Prison director Howard Skolnik at one point said he wanted the shutdown not for budget reasons but for security—though he also said the efforts to save money with staff furloughs were causing the security problems: “We can’t run these facilities in a safe fashion with furloughs coming on.” Legislators twice vetoed Gibbons’ effort to close the facility.

Gov. Brian Sandoval picked up the Gibbons effort and also supports shutdown, with inmates transferred from Carson City to High Desert State Prison in Clark County. The administration says the per-inmate cost of High Desert is less than Carson, but some legislators say the substantiation for that claim has been lacking.