I visited the current Johnson County Jail soon after it opened in 1981. I remember saying to myself, “My God! They made it too small!” The current board of supervisors approved a referendum for the November ballot to build a new jail and sheriff’s office. I support it.
Opinions on the current referendum previously published in Little Village stand on the shoulders of institutional changes made after the 2013 referendum won a majority but failed to reach the required 60 percent.
County officials inherited an overcrowded system. After the bond failed, County Attorney Janet Lyness and others helped institutionalize a different way of dealing with defendants with a network of existing jail alternatives, diversion, treatment, expedited release, and mental-health interventions. These practices persist within the county, helping keep Johnson County’s incarceration rate comparatively low…