The recent release of the study done on the Beaufort County Detention Center and the justice system surrounding it was met with bit of consternation. For many years, the jail — whether the county needs to build a new one, perform massive restructuring of the existing one or leave it as is and find ways to put less people in it — has been a contentious issue. For years, people on all sides of the issue have called for an outside agency to be called on to create an objective assessment of the jail. Now they have it, and the results are probably not what some parties were expecting.

The jail issue has mainly centered on one thing: overcrowding. One side of the issue says the way to avoid overcrowding, and plan for both population growth and its resultant inmate population growth, is to build a bigger jail. The other side says a new jail is not needed, there are ways to keep its population down: sending some inmates to be housed in jails in surrounding counties; lowering bonds, making release more accessible; stepping up the pace at which the District Attorney’s Office prosecutes cases. The cost of a jail is too much for Beaufort County taxpayers to shoulder, they say.

But the interesting thing about the Jail and Justice System Assessment by two contractors with the National Institute of Corrections is that the report essentially says the problem with the jail is kind of not about the jail at all. It’s about the people and programs of Beaufort County, and there are problems with the people and programs of Beaufort County.

Of course the jail has people coming in and out, but there are some who have extended stays — not because they’re serving sentences, but because they suffer from drug addictions or have mental health issues. Many are poor. They have neither access to a very limited amount of programs addressing these problems in Beaufort County, nor available funds for programs offered elsewhere. Many of their families choose to leave them in jail, because their problems are too large for them to handle, but at the same time, the jail offers no drug addiction or mental health programs or counseling, nor does it have the space to operate such programs should they exist. These people — most of who are there for minor charges and need treatment rather than incarceration — are housed with violent criminals simply because there’s not enough space in the jail to separate the violent from the non-violent.

The JJSA report does not say Beaufort County needs a new jail. What it says is that Beaufort County has a real problem that can be seen through its jail population. It leaves a lot of questions, the first of which is what would cost more: funding the programs that keep the jail population down and give people the treatment they desperately need or building a new jail?