Sisolak rejects 80 percent seizure from inmate accounts in favor of half

Nevada prisons will no longer seize 80 percent of the money deposited for inmates by families and friends. Instead, the state will take half the money, which is used by prisoners to buy necessities such as food, soap, toothpaste and toilet paper.

Gov. Steve Sisolak, Attorney General Aaron Ford and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, acting as the Board of Prison Commissioners, voted Monday to rescind a regulation imposed by Department of Corrections Director Charles Daniels last year without the board’s approval.

Daniels said the increase was designed to bring the state in line with the constitutional mandates of the victims’ rights measure Marsy’s Law, which calls for “full and timely” restitution for victims of crime.

The state collected some $220,000 in the few weeks the policy was in effect. Sisolak, Ford and Cegavske want the difference returned to inmates’ accounts. But a deputy attorney general said he’s not sure that’s possible because the money was collected by the state, and by law, should be turned over to victims.

Read more: https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/01/25/sisolak-rejects-80-percent-seizure-from-inmate-accounts-in-favor-of-half/