To an optometrist, it means you need glasses.

To Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard, good ideas about shifting away from the long-standing habit of putting every bad guy in the slammer and toward more creative and humane approaches such as aggressive drug treatment programs are all very well and good. But he needs help now.

Rumblings that a brave new world of enlightened treatment for the many criminals who wouldn't be criminals if someone would treat their drug and alcohol problems should not obscure the fact that the county's Adult Detention Center is basically full. As crime can be expected to heat up along with the weather, the sheriff will be hard-pressed to handle the inevitable increase in inmates.

Even previously instituted policies designed to screen out people who don't really need to be locked up won't be enough. The sheriff says he's already weeded his jail population down to "the worst of the worst" and cannot in good conscience start releasing old prisoners to make room for new ones.

So Kennard wants the County Council to cough up $1.6 million so he can gain extra bed space by reopening the county's old Oxbow Jail. It is clearly a short-term, stop-gap, emergency, desperation, short-sighted, politically incorrect solution.

The county ought to do it right away.

Illuminated noises coming from the council, the mayor's office and the county's criminal justice division about how the county can no longer afford to warehouse accused and convicted criminals have been heard for a long time, and nothing has been done. Such thinking, while encouraging, shouldn't be used to avoid the hard decision to help the sheriff now.

Even if the council now follows through with plans to funnel more substance abusers into treatment before they can in turn abuse other members of society - and that's a big "if," given how many studies and proposals have been put on the shelf over the years - it won't significantly reduce pressure on the jail this summer.

Or maybe even next summer.

If Salt Lake County had opened its eyes to more enlightened criminal justice and substance abuse treatment programs years ago, it wouldn't need to reopen Oxbow Jail now.

But it didn't, so it does.