BACKING OFF ON CRIMINALIZATION

Maybe the story got a little too much play in the newspaper.

Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti -- along with Sheriff Pat
Perez and many, many others -- constantly have been trying to make
room in the county jail.

That Barsanti would push to hire a full-time attorney devoted to
identifying low-risk inmates for bond reductions shouldn't have come
as such a big surprise. The move makes good sense, and I applaud him
for making it. Don't worry folks -- he's still the law-and-order guy
you elected.

Officials have become very creative in trying to find ways to
depopulate the Kane County Adult Corrections Center, adjacent to the
Kane County Judicial Center on Route 38 in St. Charles Township. As
we all know, excess inmates spill over to lockups in other counties,
costing Kane a fortune for housing and transportation costs.

It would be a move that happened above the heads of Barsanti and
County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay, but what if lawmakers got
really creative?

Many of these almost-no-risk inmates are those who get arrested for
minor drug offenses. I won't be the billionth person this week alone
to make the argument for the general legalization of illicit drugs.
There are plenty of folks doing that already -- including many
libertarians -- and I'm not sure if I agree with them.

But what of marijuana? Is it virtually harmless, as pro-legalization
groups argue?

I don't know, but I will make this argument for (probably) the
billionth time: Read the police reports in St. Charles, Elgin or
another burg, and you'll notice drunks do a heck of a job starting
fights and otherwise causing trouble in area taverns. Folks who get
caught with a little pot? They usually get pinched while doing
something else illegal, it seems.

Point is, one way to empty out that jail right quick is for some
legislative body, somewhere, to take a big roll of the dice and
decriminalize only marijuana.

Calm down, now. I'm not saying that doing so is a good or a bad idea.
I'm not so sure I want folks walking around the town where I live
completely stoned. But bopping around St. Charles or Geneva on a
Friday or Saturday evening, I see plenty of folks who obviously have
hit the bottle with a little too much determination. The way I figure
it, they pose a greater risk to my little slice of the Fox Valley.

Again, before you start sending me e-mails, I won't argue for
legalization. But I think we owe it to ourselves to consider whether
we have criminalized marijuana because it poses a real, tangible
danger to our communities, or because culturally it offends us. We
might decide the money we'd save in the criminal justice system makes
the option worth exploring.

As I said, we sure could empty out the jail that way.