MARK WAITE / PVT Members of a task force helping local residents qualify for jobs includes, clockwise from lower left, Diane Lake, interim manager of the Pahrump JobConnect office; Karen DiMassa, Business and Home Services; Great Basin College Pahrump campus director Bill Verbeck; Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Lucy Ivins; JobConnect Resource Development Officer Claudia Palacios and Nevada Partners employees Laurayne Murray and Brian Foster. Advertisement

Corrections Corporation of America received a draft of the biological assessment for the desert tortoise on the 120-acre federal detention center site and submitted comments back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, CCA Vice-President of Marketing and Communications Louise Grant said last week.

The Office of the Federal Detention Trustee will respond with comments after which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a final opinion, she said.

"We do not have a projected timetable when Fish and Wildlife would give their final opinion on it," Grant said.

CCA officials and the federal detention trustee both confirmed the receipt of the final opinion which begins an 18-month period where CCA is expected to have the Nevada Southern Detention Center completed and open to accept prisoners.

After Nye County commissioners Sept. 16 tabled consideration of the development agreement with CCA another five weeks for more study, CCA Director of Site Acquisition Brad Wiggins said it made a critical time line to construct the project even more critical.

CCA previously estimated it would take 12 to 15 months to construct the $80 million facility built to house up to 1,500 inmates awaiting trial in federal court or deportation. The biological opinion and the development agreement necessary for the building permit are the two remaining bureaucratic hurdles.

Grant replied to a few other questions posed by the public on television last week and in recent letters to the editor:

* Inmates will not be released here. "There will be no direct release to the Pahrump community," she said. "These individuals will be in the custody of the U.S. Marshals. If they're being released, they will be released at the federal courthouse in Las Vegas."

* What about a requirement to have good credit to work at the detention center?

The job application is available through the CCA Web site, www.correctionscorp.com, Grant said. There is information listed on the Web about general screening qualifications that federal corrections mandates CCA follow, she said.

"The beauty of this situation is they have enough time right now to begin working on that. If they have any concern they do not have a full, clean record, then they've got time to work on that," Grant said.

Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Lucy Ivins said a task force has been set up to help Pahrump residents apply for jobs at the detention center.

Diane Lake, interim center manager for JobConnect of Nevada, said the U.S. Marshals Service checks the applicant's employment history, any military record, reviews the job-seeker's integrity, which includes any history of dishonest conduct or excessive use of force, financial history, criminal record, driving record and medical history.

JobConnect is working on bringing a credit counseling company to Pahrump, Lake said. Any applicants who had bad debt are eligible to apply for jobs at the federal detention center if they show proof of starting a repayment program within 90 days, she said.

The applicants can be disqualiflied for employment by the U.S. Marshals Service if they had the willful issuance of a bad check in the past three years; just debts totaling greater than $1,000 which are 90 days past due with no arrangement for a payment schedule; and two or more separate incidents of any combination of a suit for non-support, involuntary repossession, eviction for financial reasons, failure to fulfill rental or contractual obligations, tax liens or wage assignments.

The final environmental impact statement on the federal detention center included a letter to detention center critic Judith Holmgren, which noted:

"The EIS authors anticipate detention center employment requirements that emphasize education and past experience together with rigorous personal and financial background checks as a condition of employment. As a result, and assuming a conservative estimate, only a relatively small portion of the current Pahrump resident population would qualiy for employment at the proposed facility. With a relatively small pool of potential job applicants able to meet the rigorous employment requirements, the potential exists that a small number of initial hires will originate from Pahrump proper.

"With the majority of Nevada's population residing in and around the city of Las Vegas, it can be expected that much of the initial workforce at the proposed facility would originate from the Las Vegas area. Over time, however, the majority of the workforce at the proposed facility could be expected to reside in and around Pahrump and in proximity to the facility."

* Will the federal detention center be minimum, medium or maximum security?

"In the proposal the terminology was minimum security," Grant said, But she added, "When CCA builds a facility, we build it according to CCA standards for safety and security which is multi-custody -- the standard and the quality of the mortar we use, the type of fencing, the security, the video surveillance."

She said, "We build state-of-the-art, technologically advanced correctional facilities that can house any level of individual."

* Will prisoners housed there be awaiting trial only in Las Vegas federal court or everywhere in the country?

"The emphasis that was placed in the RFP was that individuals, the U.S. Marshal offenders, would have business with the federal courts in Las Vegas awaiting trial or have just been sentenced and are awaiting transfer to Federal Bureau of Prison facilities.

"Regardless of who is there though, this detention center will be a short term detention center, as we have clearly indicated," Grant said.

A front page story in the Aug. 15 edition of the Pahrump Valley Times announced the launching of the CCA Web site at www.correctionscorp.com/nevada. CCA said it is designed to provide the community with timely, accurate information on the company and the Nevada Southern Detention Center.