Not All the Bad Guys Can Be Behind Bars If There’s No Room

Today, I went to jail. This wasn’t the first time. I had heard the heavy steel doors clank behind me before. The difference was that this time, I was not a tourist at Alcatraz, but a concerned Saline County citizen.

A couple of days ago, a survey about a possible jail expansion dropped in the mail to 4,000 households in Saline County. If you are one of the lucky 4,000 registered voters who received the survey, please fill it out and return it in the postage paid envelope. Your opinions on this matter are important. The random survey is a collaboration of the Saline County Sheriff’s Office and a group of faculty and students at Kansas Wesleyan. The completed surveys will be returned to KWU, where an eager group of students in the Behavioral Science and Human Services Department, under the mentorship of the department faculty, will compile the information and organize it into a report for the Saline County Sheriff’s Office, the law enforcement agency responsible for the jail.

What does all that have to do with me going to jail? I was the person who organized the printing and the mailing of the surveys. This morning, while returning the extra letterhead and envelopes to the Sheriff’s Office, I had the honor of meeting with Sheriff Glen Kochanowski and Corrections Captain Roger Soldan, who generously shared a bit of their time to give me a tour of the Saline County Jail.

Sheriff Kochanowski told me it has been his practice in the fifteen years he has been sheriff, to offer to Saline County citizens the ability to tour the jail. (This was an offer he reiterated when he announced the jail survey at a news conference this past Wednesday.) Sadly, he noted that I was part of but a handful of citizens during the 15 years he has been Sheriff who had taken him up on the offer.

Although we did not mix with the inmates, we did see all parts of the jail. It is overcrowded. With the most recent expansion (1995), the 192-bed jail was supposed to meet the county’s needs until 2025. Sheriff Kochanowski said that by the end of this weekend, the inmate population will be over 230. To further illustrate the situation, the County Attorney’s Office just this week was given permission from the County Commissioners (YEA Commissioners!) to hire another attorney to help with the ever-growing caseload, including 11 cases pending against murder suspects.

Back to the jail…Both the men’s and the women’s units made up for the lack of beds by the use of portable beds, called boats. (They do resemble a sort of flat-bottomed canoe.) Inmates sleep on the floor in these “boats.”

While some will argue that we don’t need to spend more money on additional beds/space for the jail because, after all, these people are inmates, those who make such statements are missing the bigger picture. It isn’t just about providing a bed and not a boat for everyone housed in the jail, it is about creating a safer environment for the inmates and for the law enforcement officials working in the jail. Overcrowding issues can create dangerous situations for those inside the jail, whether inmates or law enforcement personnel. Each day, those law enforcement folk put themselves on the line for our safety. The least we can do is support a jail expansion that will alleviate the overcrowding and possibly some dangerous situations. We also can encourage the County Commission to figure out a way to hire more law enforcement personnel.

So, if you are a Saline County resident, please call the Sheriff’s Office at 785-826-6500 and ask to schedule a tour of the jail. See for yourself.