(The Center Square) – A bipartisan crime law, which took effect Jan. 1, is designed to enact stricter punishments on homeless people hanging around the tourism-driven Las Vegas Strip.
Gov. Joe Lombardo in November signed Assembly Bill 4, which is the cornerstone of his agenda and was passed during the special legislative session that the governor called. Lombardo plans a ceremonial signing for later this month. The legislation includes changes in addition to those affecting the Strip, the Las Vegas Boulevard corridor that runs between the area’s major casinos and hotels.
AB4 was passed only months after a whirlwind regular session for Lombardo’s major crime bill, which saw him veto his own legislation after several last-minute legislative amendments. Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, but lack enough seats to override the Republican governor’s vetoes.
Lombardo and legislators agreed on the bill passed during the special session, but critics have expressed concerns about penalties being put on homeless people.
AB4 has been scrutinized for its Las Vegas Strip policing policy, which would allow individuals to be ordered out from the Strip corridor for up to a year for any misdemeanor, and at a minimum of a year for two misdemeanors within the first two years of an offense.
The Strip provision was adopted to protect against the “significant risk to public safety and the economic welfare of this State“ that crime poses, according to AB4.
But skeptics call the provision an anti-homeless law.
A similar Strip corridor policy was in place between January 2023 and December 2024. This earlier edition established a Corridor Court to deal with people being removed from the strip, but was shut down after questions around its legality and an overload of cases.
Brennan Bartley, who wrote a letter to a Nevada Assembly committee in opposition to AB4 during the special session, told lawmakers that he had been a public defender in the previous Corridor Court. “I saw officers walk up to homeless people who were doing nothing more disruptive than sitting on a planter box or stacking rocks and ask them for their name so they could arrest them if they had an order out.”
An “order out” is an order keeping an individual off the Strip.
Trespassing is the single biggest type of crime along the Strip, followed by violations of “orders out,” according to Las Vegas Justice Court data, from 2012 to 2025 and featured in the Nevada Independent.
Combined, trespassing and orders out accounted for 23% of crimes on the Strip.
“You would see people who got caught in a vicious cycle of doing months of jail time, and you had to go back three, four, five cases to get them doing anything other than violating an order out – often simply trespassing,” wrote Bartley.
But the Strip corridor provision has also received wide support within the resort and gaming industries, with several companies including MGM Resorts International testifying in favor of the bill, as well as the Culinary Union. MGM Resorts International owns Strip casino-hotel sites that tower above the area, varying from MGM Grand to Mandalay Bay and Bellagio.
In a post about AB4 on the social media site X, Lombardo said, “We’re strengthening protections for victims, increasing accountability for violent crime, and updating outdated statutes so our laws reflect the challenges of today.”
One expert who worked with the Nevada Legislature on the crime bill is Len Engel, director of policy and campaigns at the Crime and Justice Institute in Boston. Engel told The Center Square this week that crime data did not support the reintroduction of the Strip’s “order outs.” Still, he said, that was not always the most important consideration with new laws.
“If people perceive crime higher, if they perceive that they’re not safe, then it’s important that you just don’t throw data at them and say, ‘Your feelings are irrelevant,’” added Engel. “You’ve got to respond to their feelings. You’ve got to respond to their sense of safety.”
A CJI report from May 2025 for the Nevada legislature on an earlier version of the crime bill found “enhanced penalties do not reduce crime.”
“What does change behavior is the likelihood of arrest,” said Engel. “Not the severity of the punishment.”
AB4 features a number of other criminal justice changes. These include updated stalking laws to combat dating and online stalkers, tougher child pornography laws, and more strict DUI laws that offer an alternative correctional option.
