FINE WON'T HELP SOLVE PRISON CRISIS

The state Department of Corrections is at a familiar roadblock over
convicts left too long in county jails, but Montgomery Circuit Court Judge
William Shashy added a couple of directions last week: $2.16 million is
going to those overcrowded county jails, and if the problem isn't fixed
Commissioner Mike Haley could go to jail.

The fine may help compensate county jails for the cost of housing and
caring for state inmates long after they should have been moved into the
state prison system, but it is hard to see how it will solve the problem.
The threat to jail the commissioner could be the first time adding one to
the jail population actually served to reduce it.

The state has faced this problem before. When a judge held officials' feet
to the flames some time ago they were able to find additional space and
alternative programs to house enough inmates to stave off a fine. But this
time, even as the department faced a deadline with the threat of millions
in fines, the backlog of inmates continued to grow - from 360 in county
jails Sept. 4 to a backlog last week of 931 inmates.

And there is little evidence anything substantial has been done to address
the problem.

We can't fault the judge for being disgusted with the department's failure
to find a long-term solution to this long time problem.

At the same time, taking $2.16 million away from the Department of
Corrections now is not going to enhance its ability to find more space in
existing prisons or to create alternative sentencing programs for
non-violent offenders.

And while this problem brewed, politicians are still talking about
get-tough measures - like the governor's push for legislation requiring
certain categories of offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentence
before parole.

It's exactly the kind of law that sounds great to voters but ignores the
constraints of the corrections system.

Ignoring those constraints is what got the Department of Corrections where
it is today, facing a payment of more than $2 million for its past
failures, and getting nothing in return to help address the problem in the
future.