NWA EDITORIAL | Benton County delivers a really big number for voters

What’s the point?

An attention-getting price estimate should prompt residents to get focused on the challenges facing Benton County’s criminal justice system.

Benton County’s vision for a criminal justice complex at the site of the existing county jail is, as a matter of practicality, the kind of facility county residents will eventually need if they’re still serious about dealing with crime.

The county is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s naive to believe Northwest Arkansas can continue its pace of growth and lure only well-paid, law-abiding corporate types who stroll around Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, buy tickets to Broadway plays and roar across Beaver Lake in Mastercraft boats.

Growth also brings people who, for whatever reasons, steal, defraud, break in, assault and even murder. And no, the two groups we just described are not in all cases mutually exclusive.

The criminal justice system of yesteryear has already proven inadequate to the task, in terms of space for judges and for those who must be incarcerated. Benton County leaders are preparing to ask their constituents just how serious they are in fighting crime.

Last week, the early estimate for their plan was indeed eye-popping. At a meeting of the Quorum Court’s Finance Committee, the preliminary number was put at $250 million.

County Judge Barry Moehring, who has been working with a criminal justice committee to develop a plan, said the vision is to propose a “big facility” that would meet the county’s needs for the next 30 years.

Officials recognize county residents aren’t likely to be thrilled with the request or the price tag. But there’s more to running a county than never asking for a tax increase. One of the fundamental responsibilities of county government is the criminal justice system, including space for trials and the support staff necessary to handle larger case loads. That also includes jail space, which is the basic building block of a functioning criminal justice system. That doesn’t mean everyone person accused or convicted of a crime needs to be incarcerated for weeks or months, but it does mean judges and law enforcement agencies need space to put people. Some need to stay a long time and some need to be secured until a judge has a chance to determine whether they can be safely released to await trial or to be sent into some alternative program that keeps them out of jail.

The Benton County jail is overcrowded. The courts need more efficiency and space. And the cost reported last week are preliminary.

So, county residents, the shocking number reported last week is a wake up call, indeed. It’s time to start paying close attention to what county officials say is needed and how it might be paid for. And county officials must also deliver the details that underscore their concerns about the future of crime in Benton County. If county officials are expected to make do with what they’ve got, as voters have told them before, they suggest that will come at a cost most voters are just as eager to avoid — more crime and less enforced accountability in the years ahead.

Does that mean the $250 million plan is take it or leave it? No. It means it’s time to be part of the discussion with an intention to be part of the solution. Because solutions are needed.