York County Clerk of Courts Don O'Shell has done an admirable job of trying to make sure crime victims receive the restitution courts have ordered criminals to pay.

In 2004, his office collected $4.2 million in restitution.

Last year, that figure grew to $9.5 million.

He accomplished that through diligent efforts to suspend driver's licenses of scofflaws, hiring collection agencies and other measures.

But there's still a huge pot of uncollected restitution out there. Last month, the total topped $100 million.

What more can be done to assure convicted criminals are repaying their victims?

Why not follow the lead of the state prison system and deduct money from county prison inmates' personal accounts - which prisoners use to purchase items in the commissary?

Why should jailbirds have extra walking around money while debts to their victims go unpaid?

The state prison system policy is to deduct between 20 percent and 30 percent from accounts and from monthly income for inmates who owe restitution - as long as their balance remains above $10.

That seems more than fair.

In fact, at least one county prison takes an even higher percentage to funnel into restitution.


Pike County takes 60 percent - and the warden there says the program has worked out well without any major backlash from inmates.

Mr. O'Shell has been pushing York County's commissioners and prison officials to adopt such a policy here, but there has been some reluctance.

Commissioner Chris Reilly said he worries such a policy could lead to theft among inmates and rising tensions. "You do certain things in the prison environment to try to maintain an equilibrium," he said.

True. But the state takes a percentage - apparently without knocking the equilibrium out of balance.

Another objection: Many county inmates have not yet been convicted, so the percentage with restitution orders might not be large enough to warrant such efforts.

Well, tell that to the businessman whose employee embezzled money, got county time rather than a state sentence and has a restitution order. You can bet that business owner - whose operations might have been endangered by the embezzler - would argue such efforts are warranted.

What would be the harm in at least trying a pilot program here?