By K.C. Walpole
July 18, 2004

Fast forward to the year 2014 and envision a split-screen production on Channel 12 of Cox cable TV.

On one side is the opening of a new courthouse attended by a well-dressed crowd of the political, business and cultural elite of Alachua County.

On the other is a cheering crowd with placards flashing in the sun. They are celebrating the conversion of the old courthouse into meeting rooms and stages dedicated to cultural affairs.

Farfetched? Not really. A precedent has already been set.

The Hippodrome Theater was a federal courthouse and post office for many decades. It was made obsolete in the 1960s by the construction of a new federal courthouse and post office with more courtrooms.

Are we there? No, but we are not all that far away either. Statistics indicate that one in 15 citizens will become a convicted felon and do prison time.

Is that number ridiculous? Far from it. It was only a couple of years ago that one in 37 citizens was a convicted felon with prison time. We have 2.1 million citizens in the jails and prisons of our land, and another 4 million under the control of parole or probation officers.

Alachua County alone has an incarceration ratio that hovers around 350 per 100,000; this is exceeded only in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia.

It is more than triple the incarceration ratios of Communist China, France, England, Germany and Turkey. An interesting contrast is that Alachua County's incarceration ratio is 10 times the national ratio of Japan.