A BETTER IDEA

Jail Alternative Program A Success Worth Copying

Three Northern Panhandle counties appear to have benefited from an
alternative to locking some criminals up and taking out the checkbook. It
is time for the program to be considered elsewhere in West Virginia.

State legislators holding interim meetings in Wheeling during the weekend
heard a report from James Lee, probation officer for the community
corrections program in Brooke, Hancock and Ohio counties. The program is
saving those three counties about $630,000 a year in costs to incarcerate
those guilty of relatively minor offenses, Lee explained. As much as $145
million in costs to construct new prisons could be saved if the program is
implemented throughout the state, Lee told lawmakers.

Jail and prison space is limited, with some facilities overcrowded.
Clearly, the Mountain State simply cannot afford to build new jails and
prisons now.

County governments already have encountered severe difficulty in paying to
have prisoners housed at the state's regional jails. Until relatively
recently, however, they had few alternatives.

The program with which Lee is involved offers a viable means of dealing
with some offenders while avoiding the high cost to counties of sending
them to jail - and the even higher cost to the state of building new jails.

In the Northern Panhandle, alternative sentencing allows minor offenders to
avoid lengthy jail sentences by doing community service work, pursuing
education or working in jobs - while reporting regularly to authorities who
monitor both their progress and whether they are moving away from or back
to lives of crime. In many cases, those in the alternative sentencing
program are one-time offenders who, with careful monitoring, are no threat
to the community.

Alternative sentencing appears to be working in the Northern Panhandle.
Legislators who heard Lee's report should make it a priority to expand the
program to other counties.