The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Law enforcement philosophy used to be simple: Commit a crime, get thrown in jail.

That philosophy has changed over recent decades, partly due to greater sophistication in corrections techniques and partly due to simple cost of incarceration.

I costs $80 per day per inmate to keep a person in Deschutes County Jail, according to Undersheriff Larry Blanton. And the jail is overcrowded, so a lot of people get released. The jail has 228 beds and an average daily population of 284. Blanton says the county needs a 690-bed jail just to meet its current needs.

Blanton said the county uses electronic monitoring and other alternatives to incarceration, but it’s hard to keep up with the growing inmate population.

Blanton and Sheriff Les Stiles consider the county’s work center — currently mothballed — as critical to the county’s efforts to rehabilitate offenders instead of simply warehousing them at ever-increasing cost to the taxpayer.

Blanton told The Nugget that passage of Ballot Measures 9-35 and 9-36 in May (see story, page 1) would allow the sheriff’s office to use $2 million in contingency funds to re-open the work center.

“The majority of people we deal with today are alcohol or drug dependent,” Blanton said.

Counseling and rehab programs can help get them sober and the work center helps re-integrate them into society as productive citizens. According to Blanton, the work center provides critical structure to the lives of inmates who have often lived chaotic existences.

The inmates get counseling on basic matters such as how to dress for a job interview, showing up on time — things that most have simply never learned. They are given work opportunities that give them a sense of accomplishment — another thing many have never experienced.

But jail is an important component of the program. Blanton said that its hard to get an inmate going down the right track without the unpleasant prospect of jail hanging over him. Right now, Blanton said, offenders know there isn’t space in the jail and that they won’t be staying long.

So, even if the work center was available, there’s not enough of a stick to go along with the carrot.

That’s why the sheriff’s office considers adequate jail space critical — the alternative programs only work in tandem with conventional punishment.

The proposed tax district on the May 16 ballot won’t fund the $70 million projected cost of expanding the jail. The sheriff’s office hopes a county land sale will cover that. But the tax district would allow the sheriff’s office to staff a new jail. That part of the assessment would be on hold until the construction project was done.

“If we don’t build it, we won’t assess it,” Blanton said.

Whatever happens at the ballot box, the sheriff’s office will have to cope with an ever-growing population of offenders, most of them with drug and alcohol problems. And the law enforcement officials know that jail alone won’t be enough to do the job.