Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Tim Davis, Jamey Hansen, Tim Frerking, Chris Mende and Keesia Wirt.

Iowa’s jails and prison system may soon operate just like a cheap motel. And if you wind up staying there for a visit, you’d better not steal the towels.

According to a senate bill that went into effect on July 1, Iowa’s county sheriffs are entitled to charge jail inmates for their stays, in what basically amounts to a stone’s toss away from old fashioned debtor’s prisons.

Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, said, “If someone has the capacity to reimburse the county for their incareration, why should they have to pay?”

In this era of getting tough on crime, it is difficult to argue for the benefit of the criminal. However, there are some major holes in this plan, which several county sheriffs have already seriously considered implementing.

In all this talk of getting tough on crime the major point seems to be missed: rather than finding more effective and more financially profitable ways to incarcerate alleged criminals, why don’t we fix our attention on why we have criminals in the first place?

What is scary is that crime is becoming profitable for states. Building prisons, which employ citizens and give money to construction companies doing the actual building of the facility, is, in the short run, much more profitable than enacting anti-crime measures.

What incentive does our society now have to curb criminal activity if housing more criminals creates jobs? And what happens if an inmate is later found not guilty of a crime, and was wrongly accused? Will the state reimburse him for being unjustly incarcerated?

If taxpayers are sick of paying for housing criminals, here’s a solution: figure out what is causing all of this illegal activity in the first place. Then nobody has to pay any money to anyone.

Then again, maybe the answer to that question is one our society doesn’t want to hear.