After years of concern about the conditions at the Nye County Detention Facility in Pahrump, (commonly referred to as the Pahrump jail) the Nye County Board of Commissioners has begun the process in earnest to build a bigger and better facility. The ACLU of Nevada applauds the Nye County Board of Commissioners for taking this important step to address the many potentially unconstitutional conditions at the current facility.

The ACLU of Nevada has received numerous letters from inmates at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center (FMWCC) complaining about the medical treatment they have received while incarcerated. These complaints were alarming, and they prompted the ACLU of Nevada to send a letter on July 21 detailing our concerns about the treatment of inmates in FMWCC to Howard Skolnik, the director of the Nevada Department of Corrections, and Sheryl Foster, the warden of FMWCC.

The ACLU of Nevada has received complaints from people who were denied the ability to visit inmates charged with felonies in the Lander County Jail.

It appears that Lander County has a policy that bans visits to inmates charged with felonies (other than by their attorneys). This violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and also violates the Nevada Constitution. On June 1, 2009, the Nevada ACLU sent a letter to Lander County urging them to cease enforcement of this policy.

On March 31, the ACLU won a critical victory in our lawsuit against the Nevada Department of Corrections challenging their inadequate medical and mental health care services in Ely State Prison (Riker v. Gibbons).

Women have made great strides in the fight for equality, but gender bias and discrimination continues for many—especially immigrants, women of color, women with low incomes, victims of domestic violence, and women in our nation’s prison systems. International Women’s Day is an opportunity to to re-dedicate ourselves to the ongoing struggle for gender equity in all sectors of society. 

According to a police report and a video-recorded statement by a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer, a flash-bang grenade was used on an inmate at the Clark County Detention Center (CCDC) despite the fact that he was compliant with officer commands.

The ACLU of Nevada and the ACLU's National Prison Project, filed a class-action lawsuit today against the director of Nevada’s Department of Corrections and other top governmental officials in Nevada for failing to rectify a pervasive pattern of grossly inadequate medical care at the Ely State Prison that creates a substantial risk of serious medical harm for each of the prison’s 1,000 inmates. The lawsuit charges that the prison lacks the most basic elements of an adequate prison health care system and deprives prisoners of the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities.