You can’t blame a jailhouse prisoner for not coming forward to press charges against someone who may have beaten him. All he is doing is risking another beating or worse.

However, we believe that the law is the law and it should be enforced in jail as rigorously as it is enforced on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

A defacto double standard should not be allowed to exist when it comes to crime, especially violent crime.

If a man were to be beaten senseless in front of 10 witnesses on any public street and the man who beat him turned himself in to police and provided a written confession, he would be charged with a crime. It wouldn’t necessarily matter whether his victim … being a good Christian … chose to forgive him and not press charges.

We don’t envy the task of Solicitor Chrissy Adams when it comes to issues of this nature. She’s right when she says that, sometimes “confessions alone are not enough to convict …” She’s also right when she says that, without a complaining witness, prosecution is difficult if not impossible.

That still doesn’t excuse not exercising justice equally. The problem with shirking prosecution on the grounds that people in jail may be more prone to lie or simply won’t tell the truth simply feeds the beast.

It causes one to question whether the animals are running the zoo.

Let’s face it, cops are tough-minded individuals. They have to be. They face the worst our society has to offer every day. Some could care less if one criminal bashes in the head of another. We understand.

However, we don’t accept that as how it should be … inside jail or out.

Police working in detention facilities have a responsibility, no matter how bad or outdated the facilities they work at may be, to protect prisoners from each other. Failing at that, they have a responsibility to investigate and officers of the court have a responsibility to prosecute.