SMART ON CRIME BETTER THAN 'TOUGH ON CRIME'

The current county budget crisis and its direct impact on public-safety
spending present an excellent opportunity for our county to make a shift
toward proven, cost-effective approaches to reducing crime.

The recent Vera Institute jail study showed that 20 percent of 2007
Hamilton County jail inmates, or about 9,500 people, were locked-up
more than once in just that year. How many more have cycled through
our jail -and at what cost -over the course of several years?

We must find a better way to deal with repeat offenders, especially
those whose actions are driven by drug addiction or mental illness.

One example is the state of Washington, which in 2005 commissioned a
cost-benefit evaluation of alternative sentencing programs, such as
drug treatment, mental-health treatment, and job training.

Rigorous statistical analysis proved that certain well-designed
programs reduced crime while saving taxpayer dollars in both the long
and the short term. Recent bi-partisan legislation in Pennsylvania
will instigate similar evaluation and implementation of alternatives
to incarceration.

One area that is ripe for alternative sentencing in Hamilton County is
child support.

There is no debate that we all want to see children get the financial
support they need. But incarcerating non-payers of child support ruins
their chances of keeping or finding a job and beginning payment upon
release.

This system sets up low-income fathers with poor job skills for
failure - and creates another population of people who routinely cycle
through our jail and drain our rapidly vanishing criminal-justice budget.

Robust job training and coaching would be both less expensive and more
likely to generate child-support payments.

Fortunately, work has begun to design and implement such programs by
the Hamilton County Criminal Justice Commission, created by the county
commissioners in early 2007. The county is in the midst of receiving
recommendations, model program descriptions, and research from the
Criminal Justice Commission for evidence-based, lower-cost
alternatives to our ailing jail system.

These recommendations will allow the county to demand outcome
measurements so the taxpayers can hold programs accountable for
reducing crime and getting people with criminal records into the workforce.

People who have committed crimes can and will be held personally
accountable for harming our communities. But we now have an
opportunity to take the next step of reintegrating these people back
into our communities. We can create opportunities for these former
offenders to increase their contributions back to society in the form
of child-support payments and income taxes.

Hamilton County stands at a crossroads: we can continue to choose
business-as-usual criminal justice that does little to interrupt the
expensive and destructive cycles of repeat offenders; or we can choose
to revamp the way we think about criminal justice and demand that our
prosecutor, sheriff, police, judges, and county commissioners
implement policies that will both make us safer and save us money.

It has become painfully clear that "tough on crime" has gotten tough
on our wallets.

Its time for us to get smart on crime and work to transform criminals
into restored citizens