Peeking inside Nevada's Prison Purse

On a brisk Thursday, March 19, state lawmakers sat down to pick through this fiscal briar patch, and Democratic Assemblyman Howard Watts caught a thorn that didn’t sit right with him.

Now, the prison stores in Nevada ain’t no trifling matter. They’re projecting nigh on $15 million in sales this year, a sum that keeps the “Offenders’ Store Fund” plump as a Thanksgiving turkey.

The trick is, they slap a markup of 50 percent to 60 percent on the goods—everything from soap to socks—and the inmates, bless their shackled souls, ain’t got much else to spend their pennies on. Then there’s the vending machines, clinking and clanking their way to $200,000 last year.

With 10,800 souls penned in Nevada’s iron cages, that’s a tidy little commerce.

Now, a bit of cash trickles over to the inmate welfare account, a pot that dishes out necessaries to the poorest of the lot—free soap, socks, and, queerest of all, free burials when they shuffle off this mortal coil. The budget talk rolled on, and Watts perked up at the mention of NDOC asking for a weight bench, two stationary bicycles, and a shiny new scoreboard for the Lovelock prison.

“Recreational equipment, a scoreboard for the basketball court,” Watts mused aloud, scratching his chin. “Those are the sort of things that perk up an inmate’s welfare, I reckon.”

But then his brow furrowed like a plow hitting rock. “Frankly, I’m thunderstruck that the markup on commissary goods is paying for burials and cremations when these poor devils pass in our care.”

A fancy chart flashed up during the hearing, showing the markups plain as day, courtesy of the Nevada State Legislature. State budgets, you see, are tangled as a briar patch in a windstorm, shifting with every new governor and every pinched penny.

This year, they’re cutting loose four positions once paid from the store fund, and the phone commissions—once a golden egg—have dried up under federal orders. It’s a scramble to break even, and the result is a ledger queerer than a three-dollar bill.

The notion that the state might be fattening its coffers on the backs of these caged birds sticks in the craw of some lawmakers. Republican Minority Leader Senator Robin Titus, a sawbones by trade, demanded to know more about treating hepatitis C among the prison flock and whether the womenfolk behind bars were getting proper doctoring.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senators Rochelle Nguyen and Angie Taylor, alongside Assemblyman Natha Anderson, poked into the wages inmates earn from prison toil. The state skims 24.5 percent for room and board, five percent for victims’ funds, and caps the take at 50 percent, according to Bill Quenga, the fellow running NDOC’s industrial works.

And yes, even those wages help pay for a man’s pine box.

“There’s every reason to sit idle,” Nguyen remarked, sharp as a tack. “No wages, and your bed and bread come free.”

Welders can pull down as much as $14, while others scrape by on minimum wage—all voluntary in the state’s prison industry. Yet the state still dips its ladle into their thin soup.

It’s a curious business, this prison purse, and one that leaves a man wondering if the scales of justice ain’t just a mite out of plumb.