TEXAS JAILS RAISES SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS

Missouri is returning inmates from Texas, where they were clearly and outrageously abused in certain privately operated jails. For some years Missouri has addressed prison overcrowding by sending prisoners to the Lone Star State, where they have been housed for a fee while serving out their sentences. Release to the news media and certain legislators of a videotape of prisoners being beaten, forced to crawl on their stomachs and bitten by dogs has precipitated quite a stir in certain quarters.

Let us stipulate at the outset that treating prisoners in this fashion is indefensible in a free society in the 1990s. All will agree that such conduct is more characteristic of brutal days in dark backwaters we had hoped were long past. The FBI is investigating, civil-rights lawsuits will be filed and criminal charges are almost certain to follow.

It is also likely that legislative hearings will be convened to inquire into how this was ever allowed to happen. Attorney General Jay Nixon, never one to miss an opportunity at grandstanding, has jumped in with a lawsuit against Texas officials. From the moment of public disclosure -- on a half-dozen fronts -- the usual and proper mechanisms for society's dealing with such outrages are in good working order and performing, however clumsily, their corrective functions.

Once the breathless media updates die down, Missourians will need direct answers to some tough questions. Foremost among them will be the questions to be directed to Department of Corrections director Dora Schriro.

It is a sad truth that this ghastly episode happened on the Schriro watch. It is now known that Schriro had just had some of her minions down in Texas, checking on the very institutions where the outrages were taking place. How long had this sort of thing been going on? We are learning that some inmates had been writing letters complaining of routine brutality for some time before all the publicity. Were these reports investigated? By whom, when and how seriously? Most of the legislative inquiries will necessarily be directed to her, seeking to discover more about her stewardship of her department's responsibilities. She had better have some good answers.