EXPANSION GRANTS

Two major grants, both announced earlier this week, portend major improvements in the Cape Girardeau County Jail in Jackson and in the Alternative Education Center in Cape Girardeau that takes students who would otherwise be dropouts or potential candidates for the juvenile justice system.

In both cases, efforts to improve existing situations appear to be paying off. The county jail is well over its intended capacity, and the alternative school will, with the new grant, be able to accommodate more students. Here are some particulars:

County jail:

The jail, built in 1979, was designed to handle 64 inmates. At the time, that seemed like ample room to take care of the flow of inmates in and out of the local judicial system. Since then, however, new and tougher laws that mandate sentences along with stepped-up enforcement in general have resulted in an average inmate census at the jail of 70-plus prisoners.

This overcrowding causes problems of its own, including increased risk of mayhem among the crowded prisoners or even an occasional escape due to supervisory problems.

A $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Marshal's Service will go a long way in resolving the jail situation. Over the coming months, plans will be made for upgrading and expanding the jail, which will probably require additional local funding as well.

But there is a payback. Because of an agreement with the U.S. marshals, the federal government will pay to house prisoners in the expanded jail, which would produce nearly half a million dollars a year in revenue at existing rates -- much more if rates go up as anticipated.

This means a big chunk of the cost of housing prisoners, even those incarcerated by local judges, would be covered by the revenue from the U.S. Marshal's Service.

The key will be planning jail facilities that not only meet current needs, but also anticipate even more prisoners as courts -- state and federal -- continue to administer tough laws that emphasize jail time for more and more crimes.

Alternative school:

This relatively new program has been a success almost from the day it started. Some 26 students currently attend classes at the Salvation Army center and receive much more individualized attention in a setting geared toward success rather than failure.

"Kids who are not in school are the ones out there doing the offenses," says juvenile officer Randy Rhodes. His point is well taken. For a variety of reasons, some students just don't do well or don't fit in a traditional school classroom. Without the alternative school, they would be prime candidates for dropping out and, in some cases, seek less than legal ways to spend their time.

With a $150,000 grant from the Missouri Division of Youth Services, the alternative school will be able to add up to 20 more students, some perhaps coming from other districts besides Cape Girardeau and Jackson within the 32 Judicial Circuit that includes Perry and Bollinger counties.

The success of the alternative school can be measured, to some degree, in the statistics: how many complete their high school work, how many go on to college, how many stay out of trouble with the law.

In the last category, there appears to be a good success rate so far. Of the students who attended the alternative school last year, none was sent to programs for juvenile offenders run by the Division of Youth Services.