And, defenders of the jail could note that the ranking is based on responses of only 163 inmates, with only 15 of those claiming to have been abused. They could argue that 15 isn’t much of a base upon which to build a national ranking.

And, there might be doubts about how questions were phrased, whether every respondent interpreted them the same way and whether they all had the same definition of sexual abuse in mind when they responded.

And, furthermore, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah.

But Lucas and his department have eschewed those rationales, at least in public, since the federal report was issued late last month. Instead, as Clark County Commissioner Betty Sue Morris told Lucas and some of his managers Wednesday, “You’re obviously taking this seriously, and we thank you for that.”

In fact, even though the sample might seem small, it still amounts to 9.1 percent of the inmates who were surveyed and who reported they were victims  of abuse, mostly by other inmates but some by jail staffers.

If that last part is true, there is indeed cause for action, regardless of the validity of the overall rankings. Even one incident of sexual abuse on an inmate by a jail staffer would be outrageous and scream for attention.

So, we take comfort in the words of Darin Rouhier, the sheriff’s finance manager, who was neither poking holes in the survey nor quoting 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s famous line, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

“You can’t chalk it (the 9.1 percent abuse rate) up to sampling errors,” Rouhier said. “You’ve got to keep asking yourself: Why are we different” than the national average in the survey of 3.2 percent of inmates reporting sexual abuse.

The sheriff’s office announced a series of specific steps to correct the problem, however large or small that problem truly is. Those steps include more training for the staff, keeping better records of complaints and establishing an internal hotline so that inmates can pick up a phone in the cell pod and press “9” to report an assault.

Still, while the sheriff’s prompt   response is commendable, we also commend Commissioner Morris. When a jail official told commissioners that investigations of 11 alleged assaults in the jail found that five were unfounded, she asked what “unfounded” meant. “Unfounded means that the incident did not occur,” Sheriff Lucas responded.

Morris, a no-nonsense, show-me-the-proof public official, responded, “No, it means that you did not find that it occurred.”