TICKETS, NOT TIME, ARE RIGHT SOLUTION

Our position: Issuing fines, instead of imposing jail time, is a sound
method to reduce overcrowding at the county lockup.

Apanel of Marion County judges has made the right call in ordering tickets,
not jail time, for many nonviolent offenders.

The panel's decision was prompted by overcrowding at the county lockup,
where conditions have been so severe that a federal judge has threatened to
assess heavy fines if improvements aren't made by May 1.

For years, people who've been arrested (although not yet convicted of any
crime) have been crammed into overcrowded, unsanitary holding areas. Some
inmates have had to sleep on plastic containers on the floor because not
enough beds were provided.

The county plans to open a $11.9 million inmate processing center by
January. It should reduce overcrowding by cutting the amount of time needed
to process inmates.

In the meantime, county officials had no choice but to act. Federal Judge
Sarah Evans Barker found the county in contempt of court earlier this month
because the population of the lockup has frequently exceeded the mandated cap.

Slapping marijuana smokers, shoplifters and prostitutes with summonses to
appear is a reasonable alternative to hauling them to jail. Those types of
offenders rarely pose an immediate threat to themselves or others.

Activists who have been fighting prostitution and drug abuse in inner- city
neighborhoods are understandably worried by the decision. But there's
little evidence to indicate that arrests by themselves deter those crimes.
Prostitutes and addicts, after all, frequently return to the streets within
days of their arrest.

Cleaning up neighborhoods requires deeper solutions than locking up
offenders for short periods of time. Nothing in the judges' order changes
that fact.

Community safety isn't being sacrificed, and criminals aren't being
coddled. Instead, a rational solution has been applied to avert fines that
would have hurt every taxpayer in the county.