Special master at county jail will help define priorities

Worse things have happened in the Mahoning County Jail than the arrival of a special master appointed by a federal judge to examine operations.
Inmates have been beaten, they've been released by mistake and they've been locked down for 23 hours at a time, as if they were being held in a super-max facility.
We've never been soft on criminals, and at any given time there are some very nasty criminals in county jail. But there are also a lot of people serving terms of less than a year for lower level felonies and many are awaiting trial, meaning they are presumed to be innocent under the Constitution. The county cannot legally or ethically treat such prisoners as if they were on death row.
And so, while we do not want to minimize the serious implications that the appointment of a special master will have on the county, it may turn out to be, as a recently released federal prisoner is wont to say, a good thing.
There is no question that the county is facing a financial crisis. But there was no question of that the last time Sheriff Randall Wellington had to release inmates because he didn't have the money to pay deputies. Yet, he was accused of grandstanding.
This time, a federal judge, acting on the observations of the special master, will say how many prisoners the jail can house.
An impartial eye
The special master, whose qualifications must be agreed to by both the county and by lawyers for the inmates who brought suit in federal court, will be an impartial observer. He will be able to look at the facility, the staff, the quality of the staff and at how it is being utilized.
His report will give the sheriff and the commissioners an accurate picture of how many deputies are needed to house a given number of prisoners in the jail.
It will then be up to the commissioners and the county's judges to decide how many prisoners they can afford to keep and how many will be freed.
We have commented previously on the budget approved by the commissioners and the disproportionate share of cuts forced on the sheriff's department. Even so, other offices -- the board of elections, the recorder, the clerk of courts and the trial division of common pleas court -- have indicated they might force the commissioners to increase their appropriations.
If they do, they will have to explain to the taxpayers why their demands trump the need to keep people in jail. In that light, officeholders might find it best to make do with what they have; they might even find it politically expedient to work with the commissioners to shift some money back to the sheriff's department.