Prison Closings Trouble Upstate New York

[flashl]

In upstate New York, the rural counties that crowd the Canadian border have been known as "Little Siberia" for decades — because of the harsh winters there and because prisons are a big part of the local economy.

On a recent frigid morning, Saranac Lake's Winter Carnival parade winds down Main Street. There are dancing clowns and fire trucks and National Guardsmen home from Iraq.

And there in the middle of the parade is a float carrying a giant banner that reads "Save Camp Gabriels."

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"We can't lose this — this is more than just dollars! This is life. This is our heritage," she said.

It turns out that declining inmate populations are terrible news in northern New York, where prisons are viewed with roughly the same loyalty and fondness as factories or farms.

NPR - All Things Considered

Therein lies the rub in America. 'Our' capitalistic system figuratively forces Americans to become cannibals who rely on each other’s wretched systemic exploitation.

Americans exploitating each other is justified in the name of providing jobs and generating growth in ‘investment vehicles’ and ‘economies’. In so many ways, ‘our’ daily survival requires ‘us’ to proverbially ‘eat our own’.

The prison-industrial-complex boldly and openly admits that its projection of growth is based on population growth, not crimes or crime rates.

Places like the rural town in this article from upstate New York economy has relied for two decades on the prison boom for survival.

Wherever a prisoner is moved, federal dollars follow him or her to their destination. At the same time, the federal dollars assigned to the prisoner is removed from the prisoner’s community. Many states today are making budgetary decisions to place more money in corrections than education.

Money is not the only transaction in the movement of a prisoner, the receiving community census grows and political officers benefit from that census growth. The project, Prisoners of the Census follows and documents how senate and congressional districts benefit from the movement of prisoners.

The for-profit prison is a capitalist system where all benefactors have found means to benefit from a new currency, the prisoner.