Staff Editorial: Prisons need to take a lesson from cramped students

At the UW, we know all about overcrowding. Ask anyone who has ever lived in, visited, looked at or listened to one of our dorms [HTML_REMOVED] there are people, people, people and plenty of them.

These unfortunate circumstances have been recognized by the University administration, of course, and a solution has been put in place. Kind of. It goes something like this:

Step 1: Roll out some extra cots in the lounge areas and force freshmen to sleep on them.

Step 2: Done.

Evidently, however, the problem of overcrowding isn't resolved so easily in other state institutions [HTML_REMOVED] at least not anymore.

Our inundated prisons have long been a point of concern, debate and general contention among state leaders. City, county, state and federal officials all seem to have different interpretations of the problem and different ideas for solutions.

The solution recently pioneered by the Department of Corrections (DOC) to quell King County's complaints about overcrowding in county jails, however, raises some serious questions about the way our prison system is doing business these days.

In an unprecedented move, and at the disapproval of other law-enforcement agencies in the state, the DOC released 83 felons from King County jails last Friday.

This "solution" seems more a new and worse problem than a solution at all.

The prisoners had formerly been living on extra beds furnished by the DOC at a cost of $70 per prisoner, per day, according to the Seattle Times (apparently the UW administrators aren't the only ones who think rolling out cots is a good idea).

Space and money restrictions in concert with King County's complaints brought about the new action.

We acknowledge that this is a complicated problem with no easy solution, and that's where the DOC went wrong: Releasing prisoners was an easy solution.

As the Times points out, violent sex offenders were among those released. Further, all released inmates were expected to check in with community corrections officers by 5 p.m., Monday, but no measures were taken to ensure that this happened.

As we spend billions abroad keeping our nation "safe," it seems peculiar that we won't even spend thousands at home to keep violent criminals off our streets.