Jail long time in coming, but done right

As the finishing touches on construction of the new $56 million Kane County Jail were scheduled for completion this past week, it is a good time to reflect on the long road to providing this new lock-up, which will be housing inmates in a few months. It's also a good time to acknowledge that the county board, particularly those members who understood the concept of taking advantage of debt certificates to finance the construction rather than hoping for a passed referendum and voter approval, was able to save taxpayer dollars.

For decades, it seemed there were no answers to jail overcrowding. When voters were shooting down a 1995 referendum seeking approval to expand the county jail, then-Sheriff Ken Ramsey and other law enforcement officials were stating a simple truth: Kane County was growing, and so was the number of "bad guys" belonging in jail. Ramsey and supporters of an expanded jail had little trouble convincing most policy-makers, and newspaper opinion writers who endorsed the idea, that a crowded jail opened the door -- literally -- to allowing more of the bad folks on the streets. But it was always a tougher task to convince voters who were also facing school, library or park district tax-increase issues on an ongoing basis.

Can you imagine what it would be like in this 2008 economy to ask voters to pony up for a new jail? Board members were wise to realize that most voters know and understand school overcrowding when they see it, but have no concept of jail overcrowding. Thus, voters were not going to approve a new jail, even though it represents one of the more dangerous oversights a county can face.

We join those public officials who have worked for years to solve the county's jail overcrowding issues in welcoming the new jail near the Kane County Courthouse on Peck Road. We realize that its 640-inmate capacity will likely be filled the day it opens, as evidenced by this week's numbers -- that 536 inmates are housed at the Fabyan Parkway jail and 144 are housed in other facilities. Still, this new jail makes considerable strides toward easing the never-ending issue of jail overcrowding.

Those who remember the Frank Miller-Phil Elfstrom regime of county leadership in the 1970s and 1980s, know how often they tried to tackle this problem. It was one that Elfstrom likened to a deep well. "You throw something in, nothing comes back," he would say, meaning a jail always thirsts for more money than a county board likes to spend.

The county board under the leadership of chairman Karen McConnaughay reached its goal to build extra jail space without new tax dollars, and it occurred with little or no political posturing or finger-pointing between the sheriff and county board members. Anyone who has taken the time to look at the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority's extensive research on Kane County crime and jail populations the past two decades could see the alarming trends. The county sounded that alarm and answered with a new jail.