Consultant David Bennett has put numbers on a problem that’s been percolating in Spokane County: Twenty-seven percent of suspected felons are let go from jail before formal charges can be brought within 72 hours, which is the statutory requirement. That figure, which is above the national average, causes us to wince, but signs of the problem’s severity have been plentiful.

A Spokesman-Review article from May 6, 2005, reported that 408 criminal suspects had walked during the first four months of that year because law enforcement and prosecutors could not produce the required paperwork in time. One person let go had boasted to police that while he was robbing a house, he could have easily used the victims’ weapons against them. He was later arrested after two girls said he molested them.

At the time, then-Jail Commander Jerry Brady said, “It’s not a particular fault of law enforcement, the prosecutor’s office or the judicial system. It’s just a matter of the fact we are getting an awful lot of criminals coming through the system.”

But communities can control whether they have adequate criminal justice services to handle their crime. And Bennett’s numbers, delivered nearly three years after that article was published, suggest that the problem cannot be attributed to a sudden rise in crime.

Key players who gathered to listen to a presentation on the consultant’s report seemed to get this. Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard characterized their response as: “Where do we start and how do we sign up?”

Bennett offered possible solutions to streamline the system from the point of arrest to the filing of formal charges, but it’s difficult to imagine that such a chronic backlog can be solved without spending a lot of money.

Over the years, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has had better luck with its budget requests than the prosecutor’s office. So a bump in the number of prosecutors might be in order to keep up with arrests. If that happens, then the public defender’s office, which already carries huge caseloads, also will need a larger staff.

Increased spending on personnel would come at a time when the county is preparing to ask voters for money to finance a new jail and to purchase emergency communications equipment. Another budgetary pressure point is the fact that funding for mental health services is also falling short of demand, so some people who need treatment wind up in jail instead.

About the only good news in all of this is that criminal justice officials and county commissioners are having the discussion and that there is widespread agreement that we cannot continue down this path and maintain an acceptable level of public safety.

It’s a start.