The Department of Correctional Services and Board of Parole highlighted the steps they’ve taken in a report this month to the Legislature but offered few specifics on the progress they’ve made so far.

Some lawmakers said they’re concerned prison officials aren’t doing enough to prepare and aren’t letting senators know what resources they need to do the job.

“I would have liked to have gotten more specifics,” said Sen. Laura Ebke, chairwoman of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee. “If an emergency is declared, how long is it going to take them to get ramped up?”

Nebraska’s corrections department faces a July 1, 2020, deadline imposed by the Legislature to lower its inmate population to 140 percent of what its facilities were designed to hold. If the department falls short of that target, the prisons will fall into an automatic “overcrowding emergency” that will force state officials to consider paroling all eligible inmates right away.

As of last week, the overcrowding was worse than when lawmakers approved a high-profile prison reform package in 2015. Nebraska’s prisons housed 5,338 inmates last week in facilities that were designed to hold 3,375, placing the population at roughly 158 percent of its design capacity, according to the Department of Correctional Services.

In 2014, when state officials were developing their plan to relieve crowding, Nebraska’s prisons housed 5,130 inmates in facilities that were designed to hold 3,275 — roughly 157 percent of the design capacity.

Nebraska Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes expressed optimism last year that prison officials would meet the deadline, but it’s not clear whether he still believes that to be the case. A department spokeswoman said last week that Frakes was out of the office and not available to answer questions.

Ebke said the report submitted to lawmakers was “not very helpful” and fell short of its purpose of telling the Legislature what’s needed to solve the problem.

“This is something we should be thinking about now, rather than waiting until 2020,” she said.

Nebraska Board of Parole Chairwoman Rosalyn Cotton said board members are working to parole more individuals but aren’t going to compromise public safety to do it. Asked whether she thinks the board will make the deadline and if it needs more resources from lawmakers, Cotton said, “We will continue to do the best we can.”

Cotton said part of the crowding problem is driven by inmates who are released on parole, reoffend and get sent back to prison, even after they’ve completed rehabilitation programs.

To compensate, Cotton said the board recently started to set inmates up for parole hearings up to two years before they’re eligible. Scheduling earlier gives inmates more time and a stronger incentive to get life-skills training and treatment for anger management, addictions and other problems, she said.

“What the public doesn’t always understand is there are times when the Board of Parole and Department of Correctional Services work very hard to get these individuals the programming they need, and things still go south,” Cotton said. “There’s no one here who’s not doing everything they can.”

Sen. Bob Krist, of Omaha, said lawmakers imposed the 2020 deadline to hold department officials accountable for the changes that needed to be made and to avoid the prospect that the federal government might intervene. But after three years of waiting and watching, Krist said he doesn’t think the department will make the deadline.

“I don’t wish that on us, but right now, I think it’s inevitable,” he said.

Krist, who leaves office in January, said he believes lawmakers need to invest more in probation services and the courts to reduce the influx of new inmates into Nebraska’s prisons, but lawmakers haven’t done so because of budget shortfalls.

“We’re asking the judicial branch to do more with less, and we do it every year,” he said.

Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, of Lincoln, said she’s considering legislation next year to help the corrections department prepare for a large number of paroles. Pansing Brooks said she doesn’t believe the department is doing enough right now.

“I’m very concerned,” she said. “This has to do with the safety of our community and making sure we aren’t precipitously releasing people. We have to sit down together as multiple branches (of government) and have a plan.”

Since the death penalty was re-instated in the United States in 1976, the number of executions peaked in 1999 with 98. They were at their lowest in 2016 with 20, according to center statistics. Americans’ support for the death penalty similarly peaked in the 1990s and has declined since, according to public opinion polls by Gallup. A 2018 Gallup poll showed 56 percent of Americans supported the death penalty for a person convicted or murder.

Executions in 2018 were clustered in eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. About half of all the executions in 2018 took place in Texas, which carried out 13 death sentences. Tennessee was second with three. Alabama, Florida and Georgia each had two while Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota each carried out one.

Florida’s execution Thursday of Jose Antonio Jimenez for fatally beating and stabbing a woman during a burglary was the most recent. According to a list maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center , there are no other executions scheduled this year.

Nebraska, Tennessee and South Dakota were the three states that resumed executions this year. Nebraska’s execution of Carey Dean Moore was the state’s first execution in more than 20 years. It was also the first time any state has used the drug fentanyl in an execution. This year marked the first time in nearly nine years that Tennessee carried out an execution. South Dakota ended a six-year stretch without executions when it executed Rodney Berget, who was convicted of killing a corrections officer during a prison escape attempt.

Tennessee’s executions came at the end of a systematic challenge to lethal injection there while executions in Nebraska and South Dakota involved inmates who gave up challenges to their execution, said Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham. The center doesn’t take a side in the debate over the death penalty, Dunham said, but has criticized the way states carry out the death penalty, singling out problems with bias and secrecy, among others.

All the inmates executed in 2018 were men, and all but two of the executions were carried out by lethal injection, according to a center database .

Two Tennessee inmates, David Miller and Edmund Zagorski, chose to die by electric chair because of concerns about pain associated with the state’s lethal injection procedure. Both unsuccessfully argued to courts that Tennessee’s lethal injection procedure, which uses the drug midazolam, results in a prolonged and torturous death. Before this year, the last time a state used the electric chair to execute an inmate was 2013.

The report says that 41 new death sentences have been imposed so far this year, the fourth straight year with fewer than 50 new death sentences.

And while three states resumed executions this year, Washington became the 20th state to abolish the death penalty in October, when its Supreme Court said capital punishment in the state was “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.”

The report notes two death row inmates were freed in 2018: California inmate Vicente Benavides and Florida inmate Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin. Benavides, who was on death row for nearly 25 years after being convicted of raping and killing his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, was freed after California’s highest court ruled that false medical testimony was presented at his trial. Aguirre-Jarquin, who spent 14 years behind bars for the murder of his two neighbors, was freed after evidence showed that the daughter of one of the victims confessed to the murders and her blood was at the scene.

Seventeen inmates currently have execution dates set for 2019 , according to center records.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that farmers met in Omaha for an annual convention hosted by Farmers Business Network, an independent farmer-to-farmer network.

Brian Brown farms corn and soybeans with his son near Central City and attended the convention. He says farmers want more access to China’s market, which is largely closed after the dominant export market nearly stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to Trump’s trade tariffs.

Brown says many people will go out of business if the economy doesn’t change.

A Nebraska Farm Bureau report says the trade dispute has already cost Nebraska farmers more than $1 billion.

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (AP) — Officials at Scotts Bluff National Monument have broken ground for a visitor center expansion and renovation project.

Public officials, monument employees and the public attended a groundbreaking ceremony ahead of construction, which is set to start next month.

Monument Superintendent Dan Morford says the project will cost an estimated $3.2 million and construction will take nine months to a year.

Monument officials also unveiled a new logo in celebration of its centennial in 2019. Centennial coordinator Kayla Gasker says she hopes the logo reminds people of the pioneer spirit.

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (AP) — The Western Nebraska Regional Airport is growing in popularity as an alternative for airline passengers who don’t want to drive to Denver.

The airport saw more than 1,000 boardings in November and is on track for the same in December.

Airport officials recently met with officials from SkyWest Airlines to discuss the many requests they’ve received for additional flights. Increasing the number of flights requires the airport to consistently be at 80 percent of its capacity. Airport Director Raul Aguallo says the airport is currently at around 60 percent, and he’s confident it will hit 80 percent in the next two years.