Committee As Misnamed As Its Efforts Are Misguided

Since its formation last summer, I have been a member of what’s called the Kootenai County Criminal Justice Citizens Advisory Committee. I’ve regularly attended its meetings and served on two of its subcommittees. But I’m not planning on doing this any longer, for two troubling reasons.

First, I like truth in advertising, and this is not a citizens committee. Eighty percent of its regularly participating members are, in descending order of prominence: current or former law enforcement officials, local government officials or employees, and personal friends of the county commissioner who put the group together (his secretary is the group’s chairperson). This is not a citizens committee. It is a stacked deck.

A deck stacked for what purpose? Well, first to give local jail officials the building of their dreams. Now, don’t get me wrong. My impression is that we’re lucky to have the jailers we do. They’re professionals doing a great job under adverse conditions. And there’s no doubt the jail needs expansion. But as members of a citizens advisory committee, these jail officials are not inclined, nor have they the authority, to push for changes in the local criminal justice system that would affect the flow of people either into or out of the jail. (These two flows are the basic determinants of whether your jail is crowded.) Naturally however, these jail officials are inclined to push for more jail space, and in the absence of a limiting factor, that push will be liberal. And with a brand new money cow on the horizon, limiting factors have seemed in short supply of late.

A brand new money cow? Why yes, that would be the proposed new sales tax, and it is the second and underlying reason why this “criminal justice” committee was formed: to get this new tax past the voters.

From what this citizen observer has seen, the current jail crisis is being used as an excuse to give the county millions of dollars of new tax revenue every year. And just to sweeten the deal, millions of dollars also will be kicked back to county property owners through their tax bills, in payment for their having voted the right way on this issue. Those not fortunate enough to be property owners will not share in this governmental largesse and will have to look elsewhere than the county administration building if they want to sell their votes.

From its inception, the political will of this committee has resided in this tax issue, not criminal justice. The political will hasn’t been to look for ways to reduce the offender recidivism rate and thus reduce the need for additional jail space; the political will hasn’t been to reduce the choking and unjust backlog in the courts; the political will hasn’t been to search for alternative, less-expensive sanctions than jail time for nonviolent offenders.

In short, the political will hasn’t been to get smarter about who we put in jail at roughly $20,000 per person per year. The political will has been to get liberal amounts of new tax money - from those on the lower economic rungs, no less - and spend that money just the way we have in the past.