Smart bombs

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Spokane County’s new jail complex will cost $245 million. Last week, we learned that Kootenai County’s new jail and other facilities will cost $147 million. Six weeks ago, Oklahoma City voters approved a sales tax extension for $121.6 million in arena improvements for its new professional basketball team. You may know it by its previous name: the Seattle SuperSonics.

Two possibilities here: We as a society can confess that we spend way too much on our twin obsessions of locking people up and watching professional sports. Or we can get creative. The former, while sensible, is boring. So let’s think outside the cell while making sure inmates stay in them.

Seattle muffed its attempt to hold on to an NBA team that merely demanded taxpayer-funded renovations to an arena that had been built last century – way, way back in 1995, to be specific. But the league says it’s possible that a team could return to the Northwest. Well, why not the Inland Northwest?

Kootenai and Spokane county taxpayers could team up to build a Cabela’s-size complex that houses inmates and sports fans from both states! It would be cheaper than building separate facilities. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich is already wondering aloud about an incarceration partnership between the two counties. Sure, each state has different criminal statutes, but we could just defer to the state with the toughest laws. Besides, we’re going to need the inmates, because they’ll be running the joint.

Politicos are bemoaning the fact that the Spokane County complex will cost $8 million a year to run. So put the inmates to work selling popcorn and pay them peanuts. The proceeds from the basketball games can be poured back into the operating budget and could help pay off the construction debt. Sure, safety might be a problem, but could it be any more dangerous than attending a game in Detroit?

OK, don’t like that idea? Then come up with a better one. Like, say, building a consolidated jail with a racetrack around it. Inmates in the middle. Race fans on the perimeter. Don’t think racing is popular enough? Talk to Spokane County Commissioners Todd Mielke and Mark Richard. But do it separately, so as to avoid any open meetings violations.

Here’s another solution straight from the headlines. Might even get the support of liberals, who like to drone on about “root causes.” What’s a chief reason people end up behind bars? They’re unemployed. They have no credentials to land decent work. They then lose hope.

But instead of jailing them, why not give them credentials? Let’s fire up those diploma mills and hand out skeepskins to every last inmate. Plus, we know the government will keep the names of the phony graduates a secret.

Hey, it works for the people who currently have them.