LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nevada lawmakers have approved $4.1 million in overtime costs after Nevada Department of Corrections officials said they ran over High Desert State Prison's budget.
That's due to overtime costs for staff outages and for corrections officers to accompany offenders to the hospital.
Sen. Dina Neal asked NDOC director James Dzurenda what plans are being put in place to try to reduce overtime in 2027.
"Not with High Desert [State Prison] but with every other facility, we're looking to continue with reduction of services and reduction of visiting to every other week. We're looking at reducing, while not violating any civil rights," Dzurenda said. "We're looking at reduction of those services that are in these other facilities because what we can do is pull the staff that were involved in these services to utilize them in overtime positions."
He said he doesn't like doing it because he knows those programs help offenders who are trying to turn their lives around.
"In August of last year, I mentioned to everybody that we're looking at a shortfall of $53 million in our overtime shortage. The only way to reduce that $53 million, because we weren't budgeted for overtime, is to cut services down and utilize officers and places for overtime because we don't have the money to run those," Dzurenda said. "We had to do that to cut that back from the $53 million shortfall to a $4 million shortfall. Only way I can do it. It's not the right way but it's going to happen again. I guarantee you if I opened up all these services now, we'll be back up to $30 million, $30 million shortfall projection for next year."
An outside company previously looked at NDOC facilities, staffing levels, programs, activities, and provided several recommendations. That included increasing the number of staff at High Desert State Prison.
"[We want] to put that into our next budget to be in compliance with [those] studies so that we could actually gain more control of the facility to bring it back so that we can have less incidents, make people feel safer," Dzurenda said. "If a facility does not feel like it's running safe, you're not going to have appropriate programs. If the facility is not running safe, you'll have more offenders handling things themselves and, most likely, carrying more weapons themselves because they feel like they have to do it on their own. So, we have to get back to the safety of the facility. If we get back to the safety of the facility, then we start seeing the reduction in overtime."
AUGUST 2025: Five inmate deaths in less than a month raise questions about prison safety
Dzurenda also pointed out that if the facility isn't safe, the offenders who need programs the most will not go. He also said the biggest contributing factor to overtime has been overdoses due to the amount of K2, spice, and other synthetic cannabinoids making it into prisons across the state.
"In 2023, I had 89 overdoses. In 2024, I had 129 overdoses. In 2025, I had 245 overdoses in one year. Every single overdose requires a minimum of about three days inpatient hospital care in outside hospitals, requiring 24/7 officer coverage with two officers, all on overtime," Dzurenda said. "That's the big money and that's where I've got to start attacking and going after so I could reduce the overtime."
State lawmakers asked Dzurenda what's being done to increase senior medical staff at prisons across the state.
"In the past, we were covering senior physician levels with PAs, physician assistants, and also nurse practitioners. We just recently moved those positions back to a PA and nurse practitioner levels and not filling them as our senior physicians. The reason why we were filling them in those positions is we couldn't get any personnel to fill roles under senior physician and senior psychiatrist," Dzurenda said. "What we're doing now is putting in a request to contract out those two positions ... I do believe if we get these senior physical levels at our facilities, you'll see less going to the outside hospitals because they can make strong and better decisions under their own license that the nurse practitioner may not be able to have."
Dzurenda also mentioned how they're working to implement telehealth pods at three prisons to start and are looking at rural health grants through the federal government to purchase similar equipment for the remaining prisons.
MARCH 2026: How much money are Nevada taxpayers shelling out to settle inmate lawsuits?
Sen. Rochelle Nguyen questioned how the prison system is looking at healthcare, saying she's concerned the NDOC "maybe [doesn't] have the resources in your toolbox right now to be healthcare administrators."
"We are just approving piecemeal things that we think are going to work, like the telehealth pods or getting PAs in here or doing anything," she said. "So what is the overall strategic plan to address not only the administration of your provider network? Right now, it doesn't appear that anyone's controlling any of those costs."
"If you have a magic wand to get these doctors in there, I would love to hear it because we cannot get physicians out in these rural areas. I have one physician for the entire state right now. I have almost 11,000 offenders and I have one physician. How is an agency supposed to provide all that with one physician?" Dzurenda questioned. "We don't have many people banging down my doors and medical to work in the prison, but it's also these rural areas. I just can't get the staff. I don't even think they can in the local hospitals there. ... This is not unique to the NDOC."