MISSOURI WATCH: DOING TIME FOR THE CRIME

Some historian 50 years from now, while researching data for a thesis on crime in America in the 1990s, may wonder why contemporary society has so neglected the fine art of criminal confinement. Not only has this subject been overlooked by many of our political figures, it has been shoved under the carpet so that its true nature wont shock and disturb society.

While individuals and families are increasingly becoming prisoners-of-fear behind the locked doors of their homes, our political leaders promise relief, only it seldom arrives without additional financial burdens in the form of new taxes. Candidates from presidents on down to mayors seek voter approval by promising improved law and order, but once installed in office, discover problems that were never discussed during the campaign.

Last year, while Democrats still controlled Congress, President Clinton proposed a $30 billion-plus crime program that was designed to increase public safety with numerous projects, ranging from more police officers on the street to midnight basketball games in poor urban neighborhoods. When the measure was signed into law, proponents claimed it would add 100,000 police officers on the streets of both large cities and small towns. The nation settled back to await the miracles of Washington's answer to mounting crime statistics.

Unfortunately, it was discovered the $8.8 billion in the bill designated for more police would provide not 100,000 new cops but 20,000. On average, it costs $50,000 a year for one officer, and that's not counting the badges, blue suits, patrol cars and pension liabilities. With four shifts (three on and one off), sick leave, days off and training time, putting 10 officers on the payroll barely buys one around-the-clock beat cop. A California city, offered $450,000 to add six police, determined it would have to spend $8 million of its own.

The point is that adding more police to a department, unless it is so undermanned that a serious shortage occurs, is extremely expensive and oftentime non-productive. There are more police officers per capita in St. Louis than at any time in the city's history, yet the crime rate there continues to increase, particularly for violent offenses.

I recently visited with a top-ranking officer in the St. Louis department who said his city's crime problem could be improved not with more cops but with adequate lockup cells, assuring that criminals would serve their full sentences. "Too many crimes today are being perpetrated by guys who have been released early and are back on the streets doing the very same thing that caused them to be busted in the first place."

The officer's analysis is particularly true in St. Louis, where the city jail is under federal court supervision and where criminals must be released virtually every day because of incoming prisoners. Having thumbed their noses at their jailers as they departed, the bad guys have no place to go but back to the angry sidewalks of their neighborhoods where illegal drugs offer the only jobs available. Having beaten the law once, or even several times, the offender calculates his odds for success in the real world and opts for the illegal one.

Making the situation even worse, if this is possible, is the lack of local and state services in the worst neighborhoods. There aren't many drug treatment clinics in the ghettos of our large cities and there are even fewer counseling and employment services where crime literally becomes not only the largest but often the only employer. More and more mental health units have been shuttered in the worst neighborhoods, while drug detoxification units there are virtually unknown. Those that operate on the perimeters often have waiting lists that virtually guarantee a newcomer will not be adequately treated for weeks. And in the meantime, what is to happen to the addict? Are they just supposed to wait until their next crime, followed by the usual sentence that is quickly shortened to handle the chronic problem of too many prisoners for too few cells?

A vast amount of urban crime is now being waged by offenders who were released too early because of an inadequate number of jail cells. While promises for new jails have been made in the state's largest cities for years, officials in both St. Louis and Kansas City have often turned their attention to more glamorous, more productive activities. No one ever gets re-elected because he saw to it that jails were expanded because so little attention has been paid by the public about the nature of crime in poor neighborhoods. The emphasis is on the growing numbers of criminal acts, not on who is doing the crime. And, as the St. Louis officer noted, law agencies aren't exactly anxious to inform the public that they once had the criminal in confinement and had released him back to society, even if a federal judge made it happen.

State officials haven't exactly ennobled themselves in dealing with this problem. Perhaps afraid that if the state insisted cities provide for jail cells that Jefferson City might have to help finance the structures, Missouri has been very quiet about the urban cell crisis. Jefferson City has long supported municipal improvements by financing domed stadiums, downtown convention hotels and small baseball fields, but there's no political glory in building brick and mortar jail cells.

Missouri has moved to relieve prison overcrowding, but only because federal judges were keeping count of those admitted and released. Millions must now be spent because so many in Jefferson City played dumb over such a long period of time to a crisis that was inevitable and, worse yet, correctable much sooner. Now municipal neglect has followed closely behind, creating conditions that threaten the lives of innocent families anywhere and everywhere. Why do we find it so hard to recognize that confinement is as important as indictment of criminals?

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist who keeps tabs on government.