Friday, June 5, 2026 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Nevada was racking up daily court fines for failing to provide legally mandated psychiatric care to criminal defendants — and the consequences were spilling into the streets.
Cases were being thrown out, sending accused individuals walking free. As of January, 130 people languished in legal limbo, waiting two to three months for services a judge had already ordered.
On Thursday, the state broke ground on the facility designed to address those orders.
The Nevada Forensic Facility, a roughly 300-bed psychiatric hospital for criminal offenders with mental disorders, is expected to open in 2029 on the Department of Health and Human Services campus near the College of Southern Nevada’s West Charleston campus. It is a $340 million project funded by the state.
The project has been years in the making.
Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, who joined Gov. Joe Lombardo and construction officials at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony, did not mince words about what he said the state previously had gotten wrong.
“This is a commitment to say we acknowledge that in the past the state has not met its constitutional obligation to restore people to competency, and that’s important,” Yeager said. “You can arrest somebody, but if that prosecution can’t happen because the person’s not competent, what kind of justice is that? It’s not justice, it’s not justice for the family members of the victims, and so we have an obligation to make sure that a criminal defendant can go to trial and can help in his or her defense because that’s the way our system works.”
Nevada law requires the Division of Public and Behavioral Health to provide forensic psychiatric hospital services to criminal offenders within seven days of a court ordering it. The state hasn’t been meeting that standard.
The only two facilities in Nevada serving this population — Lake’s Crossing in Northern Nevada and Muri Stein Hospital in Las Vegas — are at or beyond capacity.
The state has been assessed $1.4 million in fines over the past two years, according to The Associated Press. The state paid a $753,500 penalty last year in Washoe County; it’s paid $447,000 in Clark County.
Lawmakers voted last year to fund the project.
When completed, the facility will provide psychiatric health services to restore competency in patients so they may stand trial for crimes they’ve been charged with.
Patients will be transported through secure areas and receive treatment in a facility designed to emphasize “healing, dignity, safety and operational efficiency,” said Drew Cross, the forensic director at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health.
“This is a population in need of timely treatment and support in a safe environment,” Cross said. “Today, we are rising to that challenge and responsibility with a state-of-the-art facility that will lead the nation in forensic mental health care.”
For Lombardo, who recalled his time as Clark County sheriff, the project addresses a “critical issue” he dealt with daily.
The demand for forensic medical services has strained patients, families and the courts, but the new facility will “expand capacity, reduce delays in treatment and improve access to inpatient services for Clark County’s forensic population awaiting placement,” he said.
Lombardo called Thursday’s event a “momentous occasion” representing “one of the most significant investments Nevada has ever made in behavioral health infrastructure.”
“The work starts today, but the benefits will be felt for decades,” he said.