Projected drop in prison overcrowding never happened, forcing Nebraska to look for new answers

LINCOLN — Five years ago, state lawmakers passed a series of sentencing reforms designed to reduce Nebraska’s chronic prison overcrowding.

The reforms, signed into law by Gov. Pete Ricketts, were hailed as a way to reduce overcrowding and avoid spending $300 million on new prisons, by directing low-level offenders into lower-cost probation programs rather than expensive prison cells.

But instead of inmate numbers going down by about 1,000, they’ve gone up, reaching new record levels. That increase has forced a renewed call to either build new prisons or adopt more reforms to keep offenders from going to prison, or do both. Read Omaha World Herald Article.