The face of Vegas justice (2024)

TruTV’s new show, “Las Vegas Jailhouse,” is simply the most fascinating show to emanate from this city since the Rat Pack played there. (Sorry, I can’t bear Celine Dion.)

Even though you already expect it, the characters who end up in the jail in Sin City (formerly known as the Clark County Detention Center) are as nutty, tawdry, cheap and lowdown as the town itself.

How can you not love a city whose unofficial jailhouse slogan is, “Come on vacation, leave on probation, return on parole violation.”

The premiere opens with a female police officer standing outside the jail’s bathroom and telling a male officer, “He pulled his pants down and I’m not about to go in there when he’s got his pants down.” The perp in question is with a woman in the bathroom.

When they get them out, the male perp says that sure, if they hadn’t interrupted them, they would have had sex. “She took my virginity [when I got out of the joint],” he says. He had been in for attempted murder that time. This time he’s in because he stole a Yorkshire terrier for said virginity-taker. When they ask her (the woman not the dog) what she was doing in the bathroom, she says, “Making babies! We want lots of babies!” Dear God — let’s hope they’re sterile.

Then there’s a guy who screams and taunts the cops. When they take him inside, it turns out he’s wearing a pink negligee and pantyhose under his T-shirt and jeans — for his girlfriend.

Then there are the hookers — who could only thrive, or at least make a living — in Las Vegas. One says she was arrested for not charging the minimum wage. I swear.

But the real standout of the show is Clark County Corrections Booking Officer Nicole Sittre, a young, sweet-faced police officer whose maturity under pressure seems to belie her age as she handles the lowlife perps — including broken, drug-addled, often pregnant hookers, drug dealers and street people — with such tremendous patience, wisdom and understanding.

Watch this one — she’s going to be the Chief of Police one day.