To the editor:

The Journal-World chose not to report on the Justice Matters meeting on Saturday, April 21, despite the fact that more than 1,000 citizens turned out to hear reports on the proposed jail expansion and mental health center. Curious, since this issue has been widely debated for months and voters have ballots in their hands. Given the paper’s editorial supporting the ballot proposition, failure to report this meeting is, simply, news suppression. This is certainly contrary to the ideal of fair and balanced coverage to which we were accustomed when the Simons family owned the paper.

One suspects that the editor did not want the county’s voters to learn that Iowa City, faced with a similar proposition to expand their jail, voted it down three times over 18 months. Each time the jail population fell, rather than rose. Over the course of five years, it declined from 160 to 92. Iowa City is, like Lawrence, a college town, though the Iowa county has 20,000 more population than Lawrence.

A recent letter in the paper asked readers to trust the County Commission. But why should they, given that the county clearly does not trust its citizens to decide on jail expansion and mental health separately? The commission has threatened that the county will have jail expansion whether or not voters want it. “Big Brother knows best” is an ominous attitude of any government and should not be tolerated by an informed citizenry, particularly one that prides itself in liberal ideals and intellectual achievement.