Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts remains confident moves by his administration can reduce prison capacity to avoid reaching emergency levels.
Ricketts points out the Nebraska prison population now is more than 150-percent of designed capacity. He says moves can be made to ease overcrowding, such as bunking more than one inmate per cell. . .
In his budget proposal, the governor asks for 49-Million dollars to add nearly 400 new beds to high-security housing units at the Lincoln Correctional Center. Ricketts also wants more money to increase inmate programming. . .
A state law calls for a significant reduction in prison population by the middle of 2020.
