LINCOLN - Five years after Nebraska lawmakers approved a sweeping plan to reduce prison crowding, state officials are only marginally closer to fixing the problem despite millions of dollars in additional funding.

Nebraska will be forced to declare an "overcrowding emergency" on Wednesday if the inmate population isn't below 140% of the state's department of corrections capacity.

Gov. Ricketts said Thursday that the overcrowding issue is in large part due to the lack of parole eligible inmates.

"I think it's important to note that 85-percent of our inmates aren't parole eligible. That of the 804 inmates that are eligible today, 35-percent of them have been out on parole already and violated that parole in some way, which is how they got incarcerated again..."

When asked about sentencing reform as a potential solution, Ricketts referenced LB 605 which was passed in 2015 and he says the bill didn't have the impact the state was hoping for.

"The expectations for LB 605 were not met with regard to what it would do with regard to our inmate system, so we're going to have to look at other solutions."

The emergency designation on July 1st will force Nebraska officials to speed up the parole process, which is something Ricketts said the state is already doing.

*Reporting from the Associated Press was used when writing this story.