THERE'S ONLY ONE FIX FOR JAIL CROWDING

If you want a metaphor for the dark side of public life, look no farther
than Horry County's jail complex, the J. Reuben Long Detention Center near
Conway. There's no better expression of our desire to jail our way to a
safer society and our reluctance to pay for the privilege. As The Sun News
reported last week, Horry County Council, at great expense, expanded the
jail to 345 beds only six years ago, but it now houses an average 490
inmates on the typical day. The 57-bed $2.1 million unit for women
prisoners now under construction will be inadequate the day it opens for
business this fall.

The owner of a $150,000 home in our county pays roughly $42 per year toward
the operation of the jail - and a lot more than that to support the police
officers, prosecutors, judges and court employees who help fill it up. Yet
dozens of inmates sleep on floor mats instead of beds on the typical day.
To create a jail large enough to get everyone up off the floor would cost
taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in construction costs and a lot more
for higher yearly operating costs.

Our reaction to such jail conditions is that miscreants deserve
uncomfortable accommodations, not locked hotels. Aren't they the dregs of
society?

Not really. Only a minority of the folks in the jail on a given day have
been convicted of crimes - usually misdemeanors that don't entail violence,
such as breaking and entering.

Of the rest, some are likely bad actors who are accused but not yet
convicted of violent crimes. Many others, accused of drug crimes, are in
limbo because the State Law Enforcement Division drug lab in Columbia takes
up to six months to process the substances that brought about their
arrests. Some are parents - usually men - who have failed to pay child support.

Many Horry jail inmates are middle-class folks arrested on charges of
driving under the influence of alcohol or abusing their spouses.

Such folks, says Solicitor Greg Hembree of Horry and Georgetown counties,
usually are not in jail long, but there are a lot of them. They contribute
to the jail's population glut.

The same goes for normally respectable visitors who have too much fun while
on the Grand Strand and get arrested for alcohol, drug and morals
violations. They help clog the jail during the busy times of the year.

The common denominator among Horry jail inmates is that we deem the acts
for which they are locked up socially undesirable. So none of this is to
suggest that those who drive under the influence, for instance, or are
domestic violence perpetrators be removed from the inmate stream to ease
jail crowding.

Our only option for dealing long term with crowding seems to be more jail
space - especially considering that the courts, under the Eighth Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution, won't allow policymakers to create Third World
hellholes.

When the time comes - and with our growth rate, we're guessing it will be
soon - voting for another jail expansion will be a hard step for Horry
County Council. There's no upside politically to boosting taxes and/or
cutting other services to buy more jail space.

But if we taxpayers are honest about it, we'll pay the bill when it comes
due, even though it stinks to bear the cost of the irresponsibility of
others. The alternatives all stink more.