A Strange Notion of Privacy

When Criminals Get a Cloak of Invisibility

In Nevada, if a man commits a crime and happens to be in the country illegally, the authorities believe his identity needs guarding with the same zeal as a treasure map.

The Nevada Department of Corrections and the Metropolitan Police Department are blacking out names like a gambler hiding his last nickel, all in the name of “privacy.” Yet the public, the taxpayers who foot the bill for these misdeeds, might have a different notion of what should be in the dark.

While the Department of Corrections had no trouble providing this information back in 2019—revealing a score of illegal repeat offenders—they’ve now developed a peculiar sensitivity, handing over a list of nearly 700 prisoners with all names redacted. It’s as if the ink ran dry on every name but not on the crime, and even more curiously, at least 137 of the inmates had prior felonies before their latest incarceration.

Las Vegas police, on the other hand, took the high road of bureaucratic doublespeak, denying the request outright and claiming they don’t have “a responsive record.”

The Department of Corrections justified its new approach to secrecy by citing two Nevada Supreme Court cases. They claim these rulings support personal privacy rights extending to convicted criminals.

For them keeping score, the Nevada taxpayer is now shelling out about $35,000 per inmate per year—amounting to roughly $24 million annually for these particular prisoners with immigration holds. It’s an expensive tab for folks whose identities we’re not allowed to know.

With the Trump administration emphasizing the deportation of criminal illegal aliens, people need to know whether Nevada officials are cooperating with ICE or working against it. But those questions, it seems, are inconvenient for some.

Henderson and North Las Vegas have no trouble releasing information on inmates handed over to ICE. Meanwhile, Las Vegas police continued to claim they don’t track such things, leaning on a federal law that allegedly protects the confidentiality of deportable aliens.

It is like admitting that something is amiss in the grand machinery of Nevada’s justice system. And as history shows, those invested in a broken system often prefer the public stay blissfully unaware.