Nevada's prison population is rising constantly, and with it go hundreds of millions of dollars that won't be spent on education, health care or other services.
The state is looking at spending more than $300 million on prison construction in the next few years alone. The worst part of it is that there is no good solution. The state's overall population is growing rapidly, sentencing laws here are among the toughest in the nation, and drugs have deep roots. End result: Severely overcrowded prisons to the point where the state is worried about lawsuits.
Should the state be considering lighter sentences? Early release for nonviolent offenders? Most Nevadans would probably be opposed to those proposals, and no politician with an interest in another term would touch it with a 10-foot pole.
Nearly every state is struggling with the same problem. There are more than 2 million people locked up in this country, including more than 11,000 in Nevada. Almost all prisons are operating over capacity.
Nobody seems to be offering good solutions, but then again nobody seems to be looking hard enough to find them.
With every discussion about building new prisons there should be equal energy spent on finding ways to intervene before troubled teens enter the criminal world. Drug courts and family diversion are in place on a small scale, but maybe it's time to spend more money on these successful programs. Maybe we should be looking at better ways to ensure prisoners have the tools to live productive lives once they leave prison.
But those things cost a lot of money, and we already know where our spending priorities are.