Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis' closing of the county jail's front door to nonviolent female offenders has set off a scramble for alternatives. Officials seem more worried about the "revolving door" effect of releasing addicted prostitutes. Although Leis' policy still requires booking them and setting court dates, most of the women will just no longer spend the night in jail awaiting a court hearing.

Jail overcrowding and quick releases are nothing new in Hamilton County, but the strain of such stopgap measures is getting worse. Some judges are contributing to the problem. They need to get back to allowing prisoners to earn early-release credits for participating in work details. Like a voice crying in the wilderness, Leis has been warning for years that the "temporary" 822-bed Queensgate jail needs to be closed. It is time to reopen the debate on whether to build another jail, and we must make sure we aren't fooling ourselves with alternative programs.

Drug courts, mental health courts and other treatment programs help the willing few, but many prisoners just want to do their jail time and get back on the streets. Leis remains convinced the only realistic, long-term solution is a new 1,000-bed jail built next to the 1,240-bed Justice Center on Sycamore Street. Estimated cost? "The same or more than the Justice Center," Leis said. That was $54 million almost 20 years ago.

A new facility could be dorm-style, like Queensgate. Leis says a new jail would let us close Queensgate and save on staffing and equipment. Queensgate, the former Kruse Hardware building, opened in 1992 as a temporary lockup. Leis says a chunk of concrete fell the other day on a prisoner's bed. Luckily the inmate wasn't in it.

After an uproar over jail overcrowding in 1991, judges agreed to grant prisoners two- to three-day credits off their sentences for every day worked in the kitchen or on other jail details. That freed up beds, but in the last five years some judges have been sending orders not to grant the release credits. "It's absolutely stupid," says Leis, a former Common Pleas judge himself. During the Christmas season, judges often give shorter sentences to nonviolent offenders.

Hamilton County's four jails may not always be maxed out, but the sheriff is prohibited from housing males and females in the same pods or mixing mentally ill inmates with others. Ohio's River City Correctional Center in Camp Washington also doesn't help the jail. It's designed to keep prisoners out of Ohio's overcrowded penitentiaries, not divert inmates from county lockups.

Judges can give quick short-term relief, but Hamilton County needs to look for a long-term fix.