Editorial: Justice should prevail

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

It's official: There's little room for justice in Clark County anymore.

District Court judges say they're just about stretched beyond their means. Even that lovely but overpriced and delayed Regional Justice Center can't accommodate much of the expected increase in lawsuits and criminal prosecutions.

Plans to add enough judges and courtrooms to handle the expected growth are at least a decade away.

"The whole system is kind of approaching critical mass," Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle told Sam Skolnik in a story published in Monday's Las Vegas Sun. "Clark County is really going to be hurting if we wait that long."

Welcome to the club. The court system is just like the rest of Southern Nevada: It can't keep up with the torrid pace of growth.

In the criminal justice system, the judges are hardly alone.

In 2004 Clark County voters passed a resolution to increase the sales tax to pay for more police officers. Sheriff Bill Young made a convincing and righteous argument - the county needs more officers to police the growing valley and keep a lid on the crime rate.

The problem is that no one has addressed the entire system. It's simple logic: More police mean more arrests, which mean more court hearings, and more prosecutors and more public defenders and more jails and more guards and more probation officers, case workers, court staff - whew - and the list goes on.

What we have done in this county is address one individual need at a time, whether it's a new jail, the Regional Justice Center or the initiative to hire more cops. This piecemeal approach is similar to other government projects that lack cohesion because important projects are often whittled down in the name of other priorities while government leaders lack the vision or the will to plan for the long term.

We need to quit thinking of the parts of the criminal justice system and look at the whole - not just judges or jails or cops. We need to look at justice because there won't be justice until every part of the system is working properly together.