From Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, Editors. The New Press. 2002
The whole article is online at: <http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/huling_chapter.pdf>
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Along with gambling casinos and huge animal confinement units for raising or processing hogs and poultry, prisons have become one of the three leading rural economic enterprises as states and localities seek industries which provide large scale and quick opportunities......
Despite the prevailing wisdom regarding prisons as economic panaceas, evidence suggests that prison boosters in rural America should be careful what they wish for. The majority of public prison jobs, for example, do not go to people already living in the community. Higher-paying management and correctional officer jobs in public prisons come with educational and experience requirements which many rural residents do not have. Seniority (and in some cases union rules) in public corrections systems means that these prisons are typically activated with large cadres of veteran correctional personnel from other prisons. In addition, competition for jobs in depressed areas is fierce, so rural residents compete in a wider than normal market for available positions. The distances people drive to work at prisons are quite large, in most cases nearly double the average commuter range, according to Ruth Gilmore, a professor at UC-Berkeley. Gilmore's study of prison towns in California shows that less than 20% of jobs on average go to current residents of a town with a new state prison. While over time that percentage increases, it is below 40% for all of California's new rural prison towns.
The findings of Gilmore's study in California are echoed in reports from disappointed local officials in prison towns across the country. The 750 jobs that a state prison opened in 1999 brought to the tiny rural town of Malone, New York went mostly to people from outside the town because of prison system seniority rules. According to the village's director of the Office of Community Development, "Did we get seven hundred fifty jobs? We didn't get a hundred"......
Prisons may also fail to foster significant retail development. Because prisons, as a large- scale enterprise, attract chain stores, there is a "replacement" effect, with giants such as McDonalds and Walmarts pushing out locally- owned enterprises. In Tehachapi, California, home to two state prisons, 741 locally-owned businesses failed in the last decade of the 1990s, while box- store chains absorbed the local markets. As a result, there may be no net increase in tax revenues, and, because profits made by chain stores are not locally reinvested in the way that locally-owned profits may be, the circulation of dollars within a community may drop in absolute terms.......
Calling racism pervasive in rural prisons, author, researcher and former corrections officer Kelsey Kauffman has gathered extensive documentation on both individual and organized acts of racist activity in rural prisons throughout states as diverse as Indiana, New York, Virginia, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado, California, Maine and Michigan.
Individual acts of racism in prisons include the wearing of Klan-style robes or hoods at work and the wearing or displaying of confederate or skinhead flags or insignias by employees inside prisons. The problem becomes one of organized or organizational racism when excuses like "hey, it was just a joke," or "that's my heritage" are accepted and translated by prison management as "White boys will be white boys."
In at least six states, guards have appeared in mock Klan attire in recent years. Guards have also been accused of race-based threats, beatings and shootings in 10 states. Lawsuits have been filed in at least 13 states by black guards alleging racist harassment or violence from white colleagues. And uncounted settlements have been reached in civil cases filed by guards or inmates, where damages are sealed by court order......