$100 million prison facility to open Sept. 8

LAS VEGAS - With Nevada's prison population increasing at the rate of 750 people a year, the Nevada Department of Prisons is working to have its newest facility on line in three months.

The $100 million, 576,000-square-foot High Desert State Prison will open Sept. 8 to inmates from seven other overcrowded state correctional centers that house about 9,500 prisoners.

About 1,000 prisoners, 600 of them from the Jean prison that will be closed, will arrive in the first phase. The second phase of arrivals, in December, will increase the population to 2,000.

When the third phase is completed at a later date, the prison will house 3,000 prisoners and cover just short of 1 million square feet.

Inmates will be confined two to a cell measuring 7 by 12 feet. Interior and exterior locks will be operated by a centrally controlled security system, which also will be capable of controlling water and electricity in each cell.

Jackie Crawford, the new director of the Nevada Department of Prisons, toured the facility with the media on Monday.

Six dining rooms, sharing a 77,000-square-foot kitchen, are capable of feeding all 3,000 prisoners in an hour and a half, prison officials said. Five cooks will prepare three meals ''from scratch'' with 150-200 paid inmates to help. The food budget per inmate is $2.82 per day.

The prison also has an education building with two libraries - one of them a law library. Eight classrooms will be staffed by teachers from the Clark County School District.

Electrified fences measuring 13 feet high - guarding the interior rim of the prison - will jolt inmates with 5,000 volts if they try to escape. If they try again the charge jumps to 20,000 volts. Because this is a lethal dose, inmates may want to comprehend a sign at a prison exercise yard: ''You are in prison. Get over it.''

Dan Dailey of state public works board called the fence a ''lethal electric fence.'' It electrocutes anybody who touches it.

The cost of the fence is $1.9 million, but is designed to save the state from erecting guard towers, which cost $250,000 to $300,000 a year to staff.

There are three fences at the prison. There's a 14-foot chain link fence that the inmate would first have to scale. Then about 10 feet from that sits the 12 foot electric fence, and after that, there's another chain link fence on the outside.

The third fence is to keep the public away from the electric fence, which will also have signs on it about the danger.

Crawford is contemplating the possibility of making High Desert the first smoke-free prison in Nevada. The ban would include all prisoners and the prison's 431 employees, 340 of whom will be guards.

''We are on a hunt for good people,'' said Crawford, speaking about the career opportunities in this ''growing industry.'' Nevada has the seventh-highest rate of inmates in the country - 546 per 100,000 people.