LINCOLN — Nebraska has the country’s most or second most overcrowded prison system, depending on who you ask.

Inspector General of the Nebraska Correctional System Doug Koebernick confirmed the rankings in his 2025 annual report released in September. In it, he wrote that Nebraska ranks first in prison overcrowding when measured by operational capacity, second behind Alabama where the crowding is measured by design capacity.

Nebraska formally entered a prison overcrowding emergency in 2020 when the system surpassed 140% of its design capacity, as determined by the available bed space across all prison system facilities. Though the way the state measures such emergencies has broadened under state law, Koebernick said the system hasn’t officially resolved its existing crisis, so the emergency remains in effect.

Several factors have heightened the problem in the short-term. The system is currently in the process of transitioning its McCook Work Ethic Camp to an ICE detention facility, which will require the relocation of some 140 inmates, and the state is continuing to repair storm damage at the Nebraska State Penitentiary that relocated another 380 inmates.

State Sen. Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln, chair of the Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, said she was slightly frustrated that Koebernick’s report seemed to continue the “narrative” that Nebraska’s prisons are overcrowded. She previously told the Nebraska Examiner that she doesn’t believe such a crisis exists, because some bed space is still open across the state’s nine facilities.

When people hear Nebraska’s prisons are overcrowded, Bosn said many people jump to the conclusion that the state is incarcerating people at higher rates than nearby states. But that’s not true, she said. In fact, Bosn claimed that out of all of Nebraska’s neighbors, only Iowa has a lower incarceration rate based on population.

Despite this, Bosn said the OIG’s report offers a good summary of the progress that has been made in Nebraska’s correctional system in recent years and illuminates the work that still needs to be done.

“If we’re going to call it corrections, we actually need to be correcting the behavior that we think needed changing,” Bosn said.

The Ongoing Overcrowding Emergency

Nebraska’s prison population has remained relatively flat since 2020, barring a temporary decline linked to the state’s COVID-19 response. The population is currently over 5,700 people across all nine facilities, Koebernick said.

Part of the reason for that stability is that the number of paroles granted jumped nearly 50% in 2024, from 833 in 2023 to 1,232, according to Koebernick’s report. He estimated that paroles would remain about that high this year as well.

Sen. Terrell McKinney of Omaha, a vocal critic of Nebraska’s Department of Correctional Services, described that change as progress, but suspects that the increase only happened because the Board of Parole was called out by him and other lawmakers. McKinney passed Legislative Bill 631 in 2024 that, among other things, decreased the reasons why the board may defer parole and increased the reasons why a board member may be removed from service.

Either way, Nebraska has one of the most overcrowded prison systems nationally, Koebernick said. The data he used to rank Nebraska against other states comes from the U.S. Department of Justice, with research data that extends through the end of 2022. Koebernick said he expects an update later this month to include changes from 2023. However, he said he doesn’t anticipate much change.

The DOJ measures prison overcrowding by both design capacity and operational capacity, Koebernick said. While design capacity is a stricter measurement by bed space, operational capacity is more complex and usually considers a variety of factors including staffing and the availability of services for inmates. Nebraska measures operational capacity as 125% of design capacity.

Earlier this year, lawmakers passed Legislative Bill 150, which, among other things, changed how the state will measure overcrowding emergencies in the future by operational capacity rather than by design capacity. The change to operational capacity gives Nebraska’s prisons a higher threshold for when an emergency starts, because the measurement is broader.

If Nebraska had measured its prison system by operational capacity in 2020, Koebernick said, the state would no longer be in an overcrowding emergency right now. However, there are mixed views as to which measurement is best. Koebernick said he’s typically looked at design capacity because it’s more consistent, where the definition of operational capacity can vary from state to state.

Even Koebernick did not have a clear explanation why Nebraska would rank first in overcrowding going off of operational capacity, but second in terms of design capacity. It could be because Alabama’s prison system found a way to offer more bed space, but he couldn’t be certain.

“I almost dreaded putting it in the report because of this,” Koebernick said. “Because it’s a little unclear.”

Koebernick said officials with the Department of Correctional Services usually don’t like to measure overcrowding by design capacity because it is stricter, but he countered that this also helped justify the $350 million approved for the brand new prison in Lincoln the Legislature signed off on in 2023.

Bosn noted that Corrections Director Rob Jeffreys measures overcrowding not by design or operational capacity, but by bed capacity, which isn’t a federally recognized measurement. Bed capacity refers to the number of beds in facilities across the system that are available to house incarcerated people, according to Koebernick’s report.

In Koebernick’s report, he said two of Nebraska’s nine correctional facilities exceed bed capacity. Measured by design or operational capacity, a majority of the state’s prisons are over capacity.

McKinney said he doesn’t have a preference between design and operational capacity as measurements of overcrowding. He said he knows the system is overcrowded by examining the state’s men-only facilities.

McKinney said the Corrections Department and its allies tend to paint Nebraska’s system as less crowded than it is by combining the population of all facilities, including those that house women and minors. The problem is that males make up about 92% of Nebraska’s incarcerated population, according to Koebernick.

In 2016, the OIG determined Nebraska’s prison system to be in a staffing crisis, with 252 vacancies as of June of that year. After peaking at 527 vacancies in 2021, Nebraska’s current vacancies have dropped back to 295 as of June of this year, according to the report.

Koebernick acknowledged several areas of progress in staffing, including a dropping turnover and raising the average salary of corrections workers by $30,000 since 2015. However, he noted that multiple facilities still have staffing emergencies in effect.

Losing One Facility, Gaining Another

Koebernick’s report came out at a unique time for Nebraska’s prison system. Bosn said if it had come out a month or so later, it would likely show the system in much better shape than it is currently.

In August, a severe storm tore roofing off of two housing units in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, displacing more than 380 men who were living there. As of Sept. 15, nearly 200 inmates were still in relocated areas.

A bright side of this, Bosn said, is that the relocation found a vacant housing unit that opened up 100 new beds the department can use once the relocated inmates return. She said she is hopeful some of those beds can be used to house inmates from McCook’s Work Ethic Camp, which is poised to be transitioned into an ICE detention center.

McKinney said Koebernick’s report shows that now is a bad time for Nebraska to pull one of its existing correctional facilities out of service. He argued it would only worsen the state’s overcrowding emergency.

Koebernick said because the Work Ethic Camp only has about 140 people housed there now, it likely won’t have an immediately noticeable impact on Nebraska’s prison overcrowding. In all likelihood, many of the current inmates will be sent to community corrections centers, where they would have graduated anyway, he said.

However, Koebernick said he is concerned about the long-term impacts, given the McCook center offers programming not offered in most other facilities, like specific re-entry and rehabilitative services. The average stay in McCook is only six to nine months, he said, so there will likely be continued need to house inmates over time who would have otherwise gone to the Work Ethic Camp.

The new prison in Lincoln should bring the system below the design capacity threshold as well, he said, but only if the population remains level.

McKinney has maintained that the new prison will be overcrowded by the time it opens. He noted that the current system was built to house 4,500 people, and the new prison is designed for 1,500 beds. With the current population over 5,700 inmates, that doesn’t leave much room for change.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/10/02/nebraska-ranks-near-top-of-u-s-i...