Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jul 2002
Source: Sun News (SC)
Copyright: 2002 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://web.thesunnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987

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.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens