This blog post originally appeared as an op-ed in the Pensacola News-Journal.

Oftentimes, it takes a tragedy to draw our attention to inadequacies and failures that have been long simmering just below the surface. And when the time comes to rebuild after a tragedy, if we lose the opportunity to also fix those long-festering problems, we do ourselves a disservice.

As we near two months since the tragedy at the Escambia County Jail that killed and injured inmates and staff, our community must take stock of our jail's controversial history and do what we can to change it.

Even before the lethal explosion, the jail was not where it should be.

In the past six years, the Escambia County Jail has been cited for appalling levels of violence due to lack of correctional staff and inadequate mental health care services, has been investigated by the Department of Justice, saw improvements and setbacks in conditions, and changed hands from Sheriff David Morgan to Escambia County.

The terrible conditions of the Escambia County Jail must be remedied immediately, but meeting constitutional standards only addresses symptoms of a larger and more-expensive problem: overincarceration.

Each year, our jail houses thousands of people – 70 percent of whom have not been convicted of a crime and could potentially be released without a threat of public safety or avoidance of justice. Also, it unfairly impacts low-income communities and people of color. This costs millions in tax dollars with questionable benefit to public safety.

Fortunately for community leaders, specific policies and procedures will reduce our jail population and improve the troubling inmate-to-guard ratios.

We can encourage the state attorney and courts to ensure that individuals charged with low-level, nonviolent crimes are released on their own recognizance. The impoverished represent a disproportionate number of criminal defendants. Many people have jobs and families to support and are housed before trial only because they cannot afford bail. It is both a waste of money and a detriment to those being unnecessarily incarcerated.

We can better utilize community or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail. For those who pose a flight risk, ankle monitors are a cheap and easy way to keep track of individuals awaiting trial while allowing them to be productive citizens. In Escambia County, defendants are required to pay to take part in the monitoring program. Many cannot afford to do so, thus they remain in jail. The county should waive or pay this fee.

We can also use court notifications. Automated or personal reminders are proven to reduce failure-to-appear rates. It is simple, yet effective.

The criminal justice system is not a solution to every problem a community faces, and harsher penalties and an overreliance on incarceration strain resources and damage lives.

To be sure, the flaws in a criminal justice system didn't cause the explosion that claimed two lives at the jail – but neither will a rebuilt building or new safety measures mean a "fixed" jail. So, as our community moves past the shock of April 30 and begins to reckon with what comes next for the facility, we have to look beyond repairing a damaged building and fix a broken system.

As we suspected, local law enforcement officials are borrowing cell phone tracking devices known as “stingrays” from the U.S. Marshals Service—and police are deliberately concealing the use of stingrays in court documents submitted to judges in criminal investigations.

The ACLU of Florida released a set of internal police emails obtained today through a public records request with the subject line “Trap and Trace Confidentiality.” The documents confirm that local police, working on state court matters, hide behind the sham cloak of the U.S. Marshals’ office to keep the information about stingray use out of court files—and beyond even a court’s custody and reach.

In the email exchange, a Sarasota Police Department sergeant wrote that in a warrant application to a judge, a North Port Police Department detective had “specifically outlined the investigative means used to locate the suspect,” and the sergeant asked that the detective “submit a new PCA [probable cause affidavit] and seal the old one.” In other words, fix the old affidavit and keep the use of the stingray equipment secret.

The sergeant also wrote, “In the past, and at the request of the U.S. Marshalls [sic], the investigative means utilized to locate the suspect have not been revealed so that we may continue to utilize this technology without the knowledge of the criminal element. In reports or depositions we simply refer to the assistance as ‘received information from a confidential source regarding the location of the suspect.’ To date this has not been challenged…”

In a later email, a North Port PD official wrote, “We have implemented within our detective bureau to not use this investigative tool on our documents in the future.”

Concealing the use of stingrays deprives defendants of their right to challenge unconstitutional surveillance and keeps the public in the dark about invasive monitoring by local police. And local and federal law enforcement should certainly not be colluding to hide basic and accurate information about their practices from the public and the courts.

This post also appeared on ACLU National's Blog of Rights.