The Barbed Wire Choir said it best, even if they didn’t say it first: give us criminals—we need the prison jobs. Prisons, and by implication crime, can be desirable engines of economic growth, according to some. And now, Governor Easley has gotten into the prison act, effectively declaring prisons to be good business, and good for business in the communities in which they locate.
The Governor broke ground on the Columbus County Correctional Institution in June, proclaiming the new prison a triumph for economic development opportunity in Columbus and surrounding North Carolina counties.
Consider Governor Easley’s press release regarding the Columbus County facility. The Columbus prison will contain facilities for administration, warehousing and maintenance, food prep, dining, academic facilities, facilities for vocational and religious programs, and visitation areas. “To the prisoners that come here,” Governor Easley stated at the groundbreaking in June, “the prison will mean a reality check that crime does not pay in North Carolina.”
Really? Apparently crime can pay pretty well for some people ($12 million annual payroll for the prison alone), between the 400 anticipated new jobs, and the opportunity as an inmate to be cared for at the highest level that correctional services can offer, if projections are to be believed. Not only is the site being promoted as a jobs engine, it will arguably be better equipped than many North Carolina community colleges. Unlike the community colleges, however, it’s completely free for inmate/enrollees.
Governor Easley’ enthusiasm for a new prison isn’t the first time that a broken window has been hailed as a marvel of employment and economic opportunity, however.
In the 1980’s, Flora, Illinois was competing with at least 33 other communities to become the site of a new prison. Unemployment was high. In a bid to promote the town as a prison site, Flora’s former police chief recorded a song titled “All We Want’s A Prison,” but the town failed to win its bid. Undaunted, a group formed the all-male Barbed Wire Choir. Their rap song, “Is We Is,” appealed for a prison in Flora, but attracted little attention until they turned it into a 14-minute, choreographed music video. “Is We Is” featured Flora’s mayor, its police chief, a mayoral candidate, and the then-editor of the Clay County Daily Advocate-Press.
“Is We Is” not only caught on, it aired on Good Morning America (no archive available, unfortunately); ABC TV’s Spencer Christian even ad-libbed a stanza on air. Rhino Records joined the promotion when it released a 12″ novelty LP of “Is We Is.” Flora never got a prison, however.
Prisons bring some types of jobs, but there is no clear gain attached to creating a job in one part of the community because economic value has been destroyed by a criminal somewhere else in the community. Jobs created as a consequence of theft or the destruction of property should be considered an economic loss. Here’s why: If I have to repair or replace my stolen automobile, for example, I suffer a loss. Even if I employ people in the restitution process, I have not only lost the value (of the car) I had originally, I am required to sacrifice again in order to restore it.
Cheers for jobs created by prisons are contrary to the foundation of real economic growth—property rights, individual responsibility, and risk-taking with one’s own property. Crime in your local community, even if officials bestow a prison-cum-jobs-machine upon you, is not ‘economic development.’ Should nearby Pender, Bladen, Brunswick, or New Hanover counties decide to try to lure some prison ‘business’—or even crime— their way, to further their own economic development? Ridiculous. And we certainly don’t want criminals picking crime sites on the basis of amenities in their prospective jails.
There is a reason these situations sound perverse—they arise from the destruction of value, not the creation of wealth. Crime causes economic loss. Criminals, and therefore prisons, are not an economic resource. If the contrary were true, promoting crime (brick-throwing a la the “The Broken Window”) as an employment scheme would be considered a community service. That would be easy, and thoroughly absurd.