Debtors' prison?
Reading the stories on today's front page, the message to the Marion County Commission from Hillsboro is as loud as a prison warden's bullhorn:
Commissioners! This is the public! Please step away from the property owners' wallets. Come out of downtown Hillsboro's businesses with your hands up. Think about what you're doing. Nobody wins if this happens. It doesn't have to end this way.
We know it's hard to step away. Times are rough. But you don't have to stoop this low to make a buck. Step back. Take a breath. You're under duress. Tax money may be slipping through your fingers. We know. But nobody wants to wind up in Debtors' Prison, especially Main Street businesses, which are struggling, and property owners, who seem to be moving out, instead of moving in.
Cutting $5 million from the proposed $15 million justice facility project is a good start. Thank you. Now, take your other hand out of our pocket. Let's talk this out reasonably, so no one gets hurt.
We think you've been duped into believing that you can make Marion County a better place by building a tax-funded, for-profit jail at the Marion industrial complex.
After a jail is built in the Marion industrial complex, what other law-abiding company will want to build there? When the residents living across the street from the industrial complex go to sell their houses, and prospective buyers see the vans filled with orange-clad passengers rolling by, what will that do to the value of their properties?
Marion could change the name of its business industrial complex to the Prison Industrial Complex and build more jails. Just think. Marion could become the Leavenworth of central Kansas. Imagine the boon to economic development, commerce, and quality of life that would bring.
With Wichita experiencing prison overcrowding, you see opportunity. When you think about getting only nonviolent offenders to occupy your new jail beds, you can hear the rattling of prison bars. It sounds like money to your ears.
You know what? You are right. Prisons have become big business, especially in the U.S. of A. Did you know that of all the prisoners behind bars in the entire world, 25 percent of them are incarcerated here, in the land of the free. We have the highest prison population on the planet.
It sounds like a growth industry.
Prisons for profit have become the development of last resort for economically-depressed rural counties across the nation. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But has it come to this? Are we to believe that a for-profit prison is going to make it easier for our economic development professionals to recruit new businesses here?
The prison-industrial complex is not only a set of interest groups and institutions. It is also a state of mind. It is the attitude that says there's big money in the nation's criminal justice system, let's get some of that!
But putting the county in debt to build a prison isn't the answer to our economic woes. We know you've trimmed $5 million off of your palatial plan. But a $10 million prison isn't the answer. Cutting back on a bad idea doesn't make it better, just less of a bad idea.
What's the big rush to put this on the ballot? Is it because the state legislature is trying to curb county and local governments' ability to increase sales taxes on its citizens? Could this be your last chance to cram a sales tax increase down the throats of Marion County citizens? No wonder you're in such a hurry.
We know you think building a for-profit jail will help the economy. But consider this: Recent studies have shown that the business of keeping people behind bars often backfires.
Using 1990 and 2000 census data, a national study (Besser & Hanson, 2003) examining the economic impact of state prisons built in the 1990s on small town economies found:
— The rate of increase in the number of new businesses, non-agricultural employment, average household wages, retail sales, median value of owner occupied housing, and total number of new housing units is substantially less in prison towns than in non-prison towns. The only gain found for prison towns vs. non-prison towns was in public sector employment.
— Prison towns lost an average of 33 percent in population over the decade 1990-2000 while the population in non-prison towns increased an average of 12 percent.
If you insist on building a for-profit facility, the lockdowns won't be limited to the new jail. They'll be lockdowns on Main Street Hillsboro, Peabody, and Marion as well.
So, the concerns and fears expressed at the recent Hillsboro City Council meeting are well-founded. We know someone said the only reason why the City of Marion was on your side on this was because it wants to fill its industrial complex. That was a cheap shot. Hillsboro has plenty of empty spaces in its industrial park as well.
But whether its Hillsboro or Marion, there's something wrong when the only industry we can attract is arguably immoral, and will be subsidized on the backs of good people trying to make an honest living on Main Streets in Hillsboro and Marion. The Star-Journal believes it is un-Christian to profit from a structural and systemic evil as diabolical as the U.S. prison system. Deriving lucre from this source cannot be good for the soul of our community.
The Star-Journal also would like to point out that if a sales tax increase is passed to pay for this prison, Hillsboro merchants will pay a greater share.
According to the state department of revenue, the one-cent Marion County sales tax generated $66,000 in December; and $23,500, or 35 percent, of it came from Hillsboro. If an additional sales tax is levied to subsidize a for-profit jail, what can Hillsboro expect from its investment?
We ask you to rethink what you're doing. Start over from scratch. Investigate the pros and cons of housing cons. Seek advice from real prison-building experts. Find an architectural firm that has built several jails instead of your present firm, which stands to gain $2 million when you accept its ideas.
Perhaps we should seek a better way to rehabilitate the criminal element of our own population. See if we can't figure out how we can improve the lives of Marion County residents, so we can build a smaller jail, not a bigger one.
After the pressure applied last week, it sounds like you're getting jailhouse religion. And that's a good thing.
Debtors' prison is a place nobody wants to be.
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
