LOCK-EM-ALL-UP DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE

Space should be reserved for those who create real threat, not to warehouse
small-time crooks.

Seldom have I agreed more with a newspaper editorial than I did with the
News-Leader's May 16 Our View, "Changes would make jail last longer."

The problem: The Greene County Jail opened in 2001, projected to meet needs
for a decade, already is full.

Why? The editorial explained that just as work expands to fill time
available for a project, so incarcerations expand to fill space available
for inmates.

The News-Leader, Judge J. Miles Sweeney and Sheriff Jack Merritt seem to
know that the best way to make the new jail adequately serve and protect
the community is not to raise more taxes for yet another expansion, but to
increase the system's efficiency and shorten pretrial stays (of
nondangerous offenders), for example.

"If someone is going to be released after 10 days there is no danger in
letting him or her go after four days - or never stepping into jail at
all," according to the Our View writers.

Part of the solution as understood by Merritt doesn't require the wisdom of
Solomon: Space needs to be reserved for those who pose a threat. When jails
and prisons are bulging at the seams with violent and nonviolent offenders
then there surely is no room in the inn for additional violent guests.
Justice can be served upon nonviolent, penny-ante offenders in ways other
than overcrowding jails, expanding facilities, raising taxes again or by
putting the community at risk with dangerous criminals walking or driving
our streets.

What are those ways? At least 60. Consultant Alan Kalmanoff, hired by the
Greene County Commission, offered just that number of recommendations,
which includes giving minor crooks a citation instead of taking them to
jail. Makes sense. And makes room for those who really need to be there.
Unless, of course, you're of the old lock-em-all-up-mentality, a
time-weathered strategy that has never worked very well.

I believe we can turn "less space, more tax," into "less tax, more space"
while properly dealing with the bad guys and safeguarding our community. I
know it all seems so simple, yet I'm sure it's not. Implementation might be
tricky. It would take a lot of working together and dedicated official
cooperation to put the Kalmanoff recommendations into play.

Yet it all does seems so simple. And so right.

Stephen J. Vaudrey, Springfield, is a free-lance writer.