Two Douglas County youth-offender camps get $1.3 million budget boost

The China Spring/Aurora Pines camps for juvenile offenders will get a $1.3 million budget boost.

China Spring and Aurora Pines are camps for boys and girls, respectively. They primarily handle youths from the Carson City-Douglas County area and rural parts of Nevada.

The funding, which lawmakers approved Saturday, will add staffers to meet the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act ratios beginning this coming fiscal year. It is generated by maintaining county assessments at the same levels where they have been in the past. Gov. Brian Sandoval’s original budget recommended cutting those assessments back.

In addition, the joint Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees added $2.5 million to Washoe Child Welfare budgets and $6.6 million to Clark County’s program to address caseload growth. An additional $1.9 million was added to rural child welfare for the same caseload growth.

The budget cuts the Nevada Youth Training Center in Elko’s capacity from 110 to 60 beds and redirects the money and 29 positions to re-open Summit View in Southern Nevada.

In addition, the committees adopted the governor’s amendments adding 10 beds at the Lake’s Crossing center for mentally ill offenders in Reno, bringing capacity to 66 at a cost of $3 million. Agency officials say the increase is needed to meet mandates from federal court to get offenders into treatment within 10 days, instead of the 30 to 60 days they now wait in jail before space is available.

An additional $1.4 million will fund a second Prison Rape Elimination Act team in Southern Nevada to provide services to mental health clients who otherwise likely would have to be institutionalized.

Finally, they approved the governor’s amendment to establish a pilot mental health home-visitation program to help recently released mental health clients and their families move successfully into the community.