Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 17, 2011

Morgan Reynolds of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis is a prominent advocate of building prisons not where the crime is but where the jobs are.

Decisions regarding prison construction should be based on ?commercial opportunities,? rather than the crime rate, according to Reynolds: "It's pretty clear that's where the future is if we're going to grow our prison population."

The Texas State Legislature ? which seems perversely determined to criminalize every conceivable activity ? certainly did its formidable best to expand the prison population. Many small communities tried to profit from the prison boom. Among them was Littlefield, a town of 6,000 that borrowed $10 million to build a large medium-security prison.

In 2009, following the suicide of an inmate from Idaho who was kept in solitary confinement for a year as a punitive measure, Littlefield?s municipal government was left with a deserted jail ? and local residents were stuck with huge tax increases. Littlefield eventually had to auction off the jail at a loss. Lubbock and several other Texas cities who built their economies on the incarceration bubble are likely to follow.

A growing prison population is a symptom of societal sickness, not a source of economic benefit.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.