Commissioner: For some, prison makes people worse'.

Byline: Kevin Featherly

Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell thinks the courts and the legal community have a role to play in helping people who shouldn't be there get out of Minnesota prisons. Or at least to get the most out of their stay.

Or maybe even stay out altogether.

"I go out to Oak Park Heights, where our mental health unit is," Schnell said. "I look at some of the folks that we have there and I say to myself, 'Should these people be here?'"

It's an overarching question he'd like judges, prosecutors, public defendersanyone involved on the legal end of the criminal just systemto ask and try to answer. At least, he said, to the extent that the law allows.

Schnell, a former cop and police chief, understands and agrees with the need to hold people accountable for crimes. But he said the system seems to have a single on/off switch when it comes to the accusedacquittal or conviction.

Once one of those outcomes is reached, Schnell said, courts and prosecutors tend to let things sort themselves out. If the verdict is guilty, prison are left to handle whatever trauma and problems offenders bring with them to their cells.

"The truth of the matter is...