Effective today, under a 2015 state law, the overcrowding is now officially at an emergency level. Now, a reduction in population is imminent, and we hope the state is ready to capitalize on this event to create change that’s been needed for decades.

The overcrowding emergency was mandated if the prison population exceeds 140% – which it has since 2009 – and continues until it falls below 125%. To do so would require prisons to release roughly 1,200 more inmates than they admit.

Perhaps most perplexing is the lack of measurable action before this deadline. Governors could’ve declared this emergency earlier, and hundreds of state senators have had opportunities – both for the decades preceding and years after – the state law took effect. Yet little measurable progress has been made.

Despite adding 260 beds to prison capacity since 2016, the percentage of inmates to design capacity has remained essentially flat.

In the most recent quarterly report by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, the prisons had an average daily population of 5,601 inmates, or 158.5% of designed capacity in state-run facilities. Four years prior, those figures were 5,239 and 160%, respectively, keeping it among the nation’s most overcrowded penal systems, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inmate numbers have continued to climb – and so, too, have racial disparities. In particular, Black individuals compose 29% of inmates despite making up just 5% of the state’s population.

These numbers illustrate that Nebraska must reform, rather than build, its way out of this problem.

Even if two new prisons the size of the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution – the state’s largest with 960 beds – magically appeared overnight, Nebraska would still have 200 more inmates than its facilities were designed to hold.

Corrections Director Scott Frakes announced earlier this year a request for information regarding the possibility of a new prison. Exploring the idea doesn't cost a dime, but a $200 million investment on top of a $291 million budget for FY2020 represents far too great an expense at a time with staff shortages and inmates’ civil-rights lawsuit against the state regarding conditions within the prisons.

If anything, it proves that repeatedly throwing more money into prisons isn’t yielding the returns Nebraskans should demand. Sentencing reform for nonviolent offenders, increased programming to assist with inmates’ reentry, improved conditions and reduced prison populations are imperative.

As much as the Journal Star editorial board has hoped – for years – for this systemic change to occur, it has yet to materialize. Perhaps this emergency declaration, which seemed to spark little impetus at the Nebraska State Capitol for five years, will be the push the state needs to finally realize this goal.