OPINION

NWA EDITORIAL: In search of reforms

County ready to move forward on criminal justice

Washington County officials continue a slow and steady march toward developing some sort of reform of the local criminal justice system as some justices of the peace and other advocates look for ways to keep more people out of jail rather than spending millions of dollars to expand the county's inmate capacity.

At a recent Quorum Court meeting, Washington County Judge Joseph Wood said he'd begun contacting some elected officials and others involved in the day-to-day operation of the system -- law enforcement, local criminal court judges, prosecutors and public defenders and county jail operators -- to solicit their involvement in a criminal justice coordinating committee.

This isn't, it seems, just the creation of a committee to keep punting problems down the road, although that's a possibility with any group decision-making. Rather, the committee was a key recommendation of a $60,000 study the Quorum Court last year paid the National Center for State Courts to conduct.

The study was a response to Sheriff Tim Helder's proposal in 2018 to expand the county's 710-bed jail, which has experienced crowding issues. Initial estimates put the cost of expansion somewhere around $38 million. We'd expect the cost to be even larger today.

Times have changed. Once upon a time, when a sheriff in a growing county said he was running out of room to hold all the people accused or convicted of criminal behaviors, county leaders and the public appeared ready to do what it took to preserve "law and order." The Washington County jail down in south Fayetteville was built with expansion in mind ten, 15 or 20 years down the line. Crowding started happening just a few years after the inmates were moved from the old jail on College Avenue, which held less than 300 inmates.

Today's county leaders are injecting a dose of skepticism, questioning whether the answer for Washington County really is more concrete jail pods and less liberty for another several hundred inmates. Folks pushing for reforms say they've seen a better way -- treatment for drug abuse, mental health treatment, programs aimed at helping people get their lives in order and finding their way out of poverty.

Criminal justice reformers and Quorum Court members who'd like to avoid any tax increase to pay for an expanded jail have found a common sense of purpose: If there's a way to effectively intervene with people arrested for nonviolent crimes without warehousing them at taxpayer expense, why not, right?

So now, Wood is setting up the criminal justice coordinating committee based on the recommendations of that study, which is a step in the right direction. Because if Washington County isn't going to expand the jail, something's got to give. There's no lack of demand for jail space and time.

We don't yet know who will serve on that coordinating committee, but we suspect this: If the judges who sentence people to jail time -- after conviction or for failure to appear for a court date -- are not deeply engaged in the discussions, the success of any reforms will be in question. Judges are a critical component of the process of who gets incarcerated and for how long, as are prosecutors and public defenders.

And our other piece of unsolicited advice: To garner the public's trust and to create opportunities for better informing the public on the complexities of the criminal justice system, the process ought to be transparent. We don't know if the way the panel is set up will make it legally exempt from the provisions of open meetings, but our public officials should approach this process with an eye toward open discussions.

For criminal justice reforms to be embraced by the public, and for them to become convinced that criminals and society are best served when many of them stay out of jail, everyone's going to have to become well-versed in how reforms will work. It can't be on a hope and a prayer.

Judges are sometimes uncomfortable with the kind of role we're suggesting, but it won't hurt any of them to be deeply engaged in public discussions on a matter of public policy affecting the community.

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What’s the point?

Kudos to Washington County officials who are moving forward on possible criminal justice reforms.

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