S.L. County justice is a mess

In Salt Lake County, the jail continues to suffer from chronic overcrowding despite the fact the crime rate has declined. It's no wonder, then, that the county commissioned an expert to study the problem and recommend solutions. Something has to be out of whack.

But many of the recommendations of that study, made public this week, hinge on solving age-old problems that have plagued the county for decades. Chief among these is the proliferation of independent cities that pass their own ordinances and hire their own justice court judges who mete out justice in widely differing ways.

How different? The study found that the average jail term handed down in Draper is 34 days, while in Taylorsville it is 180 days. Assuming the crimes committed in both places are generally similar, this makes no sense at all. But then, justice court judges do not even need law degrees to perform their duties, so perhaps inequities ought to be expected.

Meanwhile, everyone sentenced to jail within the county goes to a county jail, but the cities do not get billed in proportion to the number of inmates they generate. No wonder the average length of stay in the county jail has more than doubled over the past seven years.

Certainly, it is fair to argue that crime rates are declining in part because cities and the county are willing to lock people away for long periods of time. But the lock-'em-up theory of public safety has its limits, both physical and logical.

On the physical side, taxpayers aren't ready to keep building and operating jails, nor are they likely to be any time soon. Right now, a tenth of all county revenues go toward the criminal justice system. That is about enough.

On the logical side, it makes little sense to lock up someone who is criminally delinquent on paying a fine when the cost of a first day in jail is often well over $100. Nor does it make sense to put someone in a highly secure environment who does not pose a risk to the safety of others. Instead that person could be put to work doing menial tasks and housed in a minimum-security environment that is far less expensive than a jail.

Much of this ought to be common sense, but Salt Lake County's mix of governments and philosophies doesn't lend itself easily in that direction.

The study recommends jailing only those people who pose a danger to society. It calls for justice courts to form a countywide association to help establish uniform sentencing guidelines and for a countywide arrest policy that will help officers know which people should be hauled in and which should be cited and released.

That's only a start. The study contains 60 recommendations in all. The consultant who presented it this week said these could reduce overcrowding and save taxpayers from having to build new jails for awhile.

That would be a wonderful outcome. Now, if only the many parts that make up the whole of the county can get together and agree to untangle the mess they have made.