Prisons are the New Steel Mills

I am obsessed with poverty pimps.
Once Filithy told me that Prisons are the new Steel Mills, I folded prisons into my poverty pimp theory.

Remember in American Gangster when Russel Crowe mentioned
that many people would be out of work if the drug war
was ended and implicitly that was a major incentive to keep
it going.

I had this in mind when I read an article last night in the Times
about how impact that the closing of prisons in upstate NY is
having on rural communities.

As rural economies across the country crumbled in the 1980s and the population of prison inmates swelled, largely because of tougher drug laws, states pushed prison construction as an economic escape route of sorts. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, an average of four prisons were built each year in rural America; the rate quadrupled in the 1980s and reached 24 a year in the 1990s, according to the federal Agriculture Department’s economic research service.

The boom, experts say, provided employment, but it also fostered a cycle of dependency. Depressed rural communities came to rely on the prisons as a source of jobs, economic sustenance and services, with little effort devoted to attracting other viable businesses.

“What we’ve seen in New York and other states is that one prison led to another prison and led to another prison, creating the notion that there’s no other economic development option than to build prisons to foster stability in rural areas,” said Tracy Huling, an independent consultant in New York who has done extensive research on the role of prisons in rural economies.

Cycle of dependence is an understatement.

The article is out of pocket because it lacks in its criticism an economy
that depends on one group of desperate people going to jail to provide jobs
to another desperate group of people.

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Sean Bells daughter, Jada.

Detectives in the Sean Bell case will waive a jury trial.

The move comes a day after a setback to the detectives, when an appeals court denied their request to move the trial out of New York City. If granted, the move promises to cool the tenor of the proceedings.

Defense lawyers have long seen bench trials as a means of removing emotion from the trial, with the hope of an analysis of the testimony steeped more in a professional’s legal training than a peer’s judgment.

Last week the word was that they were trying to get a change of
venue, this week, they are waiving their right to a jury trial.

Interesting.

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Police officers killed a 23 Black Off duty plain clothes officer
in White Plains.

Race may or may not be a factor.

The off-duty Mount Vernon police officer who was shot and killed by Westchester County police officers on Friday tried to break up a fight between two men and was trying to arrest one of them when he was fatally wounded, the authorities and two witnesses said on Saturday.

The officer who was killed, Christopher A. Ridley, 23, was off duty and not in uniform when he witnessed a “violent, aggravated assault” shortly before 5 p.m. near Court Street and Martine Avenue in downtown White Plains, outside the district offices of the Westchester County Department of Social Services, said Frank G. Straub, the commissioner of public safety in White Plains.

Wow.

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Have you visited a jail lately?

Do you know anyone who works in corrections?
Are you ever worry about them not coming home at night?

My brother in law is a cop and my cousin
works at juvey.

Let me tell you. People treat you different when they know you
have a cop in the family. It's weird tho, because even tho' he fam,
"he still po-po" as Dig Dug says.

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