Activists have demanded the closing of prisons for years. Recently, protests demanding action against the racist impacts of the criminal “justice” system have erupted with renewed energy.
Perhaps in response, prisons across the country have been closing . But not everyone is happy about this, for a reason you might not expect: economics.
“Prison towns” can be found nationwide. They’re usually rural, financially struggling communities who looked to prisons for jobs after farms and industrial factories began to fail.
Politicians, and residents of these towns, argue that they need the prisons. But this is a part of a vicious cycle.
Prisons require mass incarceration, which disproportionately affects Black communities, to exist. An economic system built on the torture of imprisonment shouldn’t be the only way a town can survive.
This economic dependence on imprisonment shows that something is very wrong with our economic system. We should instead be looking at why prisons are the only options: major corporations destroyed local farms, abandoned towns by moving factories to cheaper countries, and overall made it more difficult for small businesses to survive.
Even worse? Prisons rarely even provide the jobs or economic benefits supporters claim they will.
Many people, especially in rural towns, relied on prisons to barely get by. But, as the country moves toward addressing racial disaparties and capital punishment, that reliance needs to die.