Thought Experiment: Prison is a mainstay industry.
... And if it were to go away in the state of Florida, the economic impact could be a noticeable cascade.
Content Warning
Contains Descriptions of Violence and Injury.
Hi, readers!
I was queued the other morning to go for insulin at a pretty early hour, and having a discussion with another inmate who sees things about the way I do.
We both ended up agreeing to the following:
If Florida closed a double digit number of their prisons across the state, the nearby communities for each facility would suffer. Not from an uptick in criminal activity, but from a loss of jobs.
Corrections Officers aren't always being paid enough for the level of risk they are asked to assume for a daily job.
There were other things we discussed on our med walk, but I would love to pluck these two things apart with you.
Job Loss
My prison, which shan't be named, is about 5 miles or so away from the city center of a nearby small town, based on some quickly scribbled maths and my knowledge of addressing systems. Hopefully, my lovely assistant can do a little measuring and insert a verification here? :)
This pattern, I should note, repeats over and over across Florida, with prisons typically hovering around the outskirts of the nearby population center.
Prisons have to have support staff on hand 24/7/365; there is no leaving us completely unattended to take a Crimboween holiday. There is also a minimum amount of staff needed onsite to handle issues that may arise, such as fights with or without injuries. After all, they have to provide the sheriffs for the small town they're running, so to speak!
Let's suggest that a prison with a couple thousand inmates provides about 100-110 jobs across all roles in the local community. That's larger than the last place I worked!
If our facility were to shutter, that's 100-110 jobs lost.
Repeat this for another 19 facilities with the same average across Florida.
You've just dumped 2,000+ people back onto the job market.
This hurts.
But it didn't have to be this way, and the structure for incarceration is the cause.
Level of Risk
When you have inmates who have sentences that are longer than they will live, and you mix them in with us who shall be released, there is a waiting recipe for disaster here. If that inmate wakes up one morning and decides he is going to take a swing at a Corrections Officer (CO) for talking with the inmate that goes home in six months, he illustrates the problem:
Inmates that are going to go home soon generally behave to avoid giving the system an anchor point to hold them down longer.
Inmates that will never get out don't care about receiving a new outside additional charge (an "add charge" in our parlance): you cannot make a life sentence longer.
COs are in facilities where this admixture happens, and based on fragments I have overheard from them speaking at other camps, they are making what amounts to roughly $16.00 USD to start.
Picture this. You have a choice:
Come work for Burger Flipper, Inc. for $15.00 per hour to start, 20+ hours a week. A little old man might give you what for because the coffee isn't fresh.
or
Come work for the DOC for $16.00, 40+ hours a week. Inmates may attempt to punch, choke, or cut you. You may be exposed to adverse chemistry designed to subdue unruly inmates by causing pain.
I know I would work for Burger Flipper, and ask if their sister company has some extra hours at House Flipper that I could pick up. Yes, it's a dollar less per hour, but it's significantly less risk in the dollar gap. Were the gap larger, say $7.00, then I would consider the compensation to be fairer and might be willing to work as a CO.
This is leading to a peculiar thing, in which we are receiving COs that would probably not have passed physical muster years ago. I speak of officers that are severe pound pushers -- 400, 450 pounds, easy, and movement, for them, is a significant amount of effort.
How is that CO going to break up a fight in the dorm at two in the morning? Someone would already have their skull split while he's building up steam to haul that locomotive.
Sadly, that is based on my recent experiences and not conjecture or supposition.
A point of interest
Our prisons are generally understaffed.
This is the time to roll out plans for better stratification of inmates. After all, you don't admix Death Row inmates with others, so why mix in the Death Row, Extended Cut folks with people getting out in a couple of years?
Set up facilities to split that up.
Put your known gang-affiliated inmates in one place, and work on your processes to encourage them into a gangless lifestyle.
Let the rest of us go through a different way, with a focus on recividism. Give us programs, and don't couch them behind religion.
Don't let folks get too complacent at one facility for five or ten years - move them around and down these levels, give them an objective of moving off 1 Prison Loop and never coming back to the 48-bedroom, 12-shower shared apartments.
Invest in programs that are modern enough to keep up with the changing world, so when we leave, we can hit the ground running, not spin out into a ditch and get towed back to 1 Prison Loop.
I could speak more on programming -- what you might call Education -- and in a future post, I think I shall. In the now, however, I exhort you to be a community, to come together and show care and compassion, and be willing to lead the charge to Better.
Push for reforms that build structures in our community and yours. Let's come together and experience that unity.
Let's be humans, together.
Be loved, and thanks for reading. :)