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West Texas locals view TYC as jobs program

During prison building boom in the '90s, Texas pols came to view new prison units as a way to prop up the economy in depopulating rural areas, hoping to slow the rapid urbanization that transformed the state in recent decades.br /br /However, siting corrections units in remote, rural areas created many practical problems: It's difficult to find staffing, even more difficult to find medical specialists or mental health providers, and for juvenile corrections there's little access to specialized programming that might help kids succeed.br /br /Equally frustrating, because the only reason the state put prison units in tiny rural towns was to prop up their economy with political pork, locals inevitably came to see those agencies as mere jobs program instead of fulfilling a state function...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 18, 2008 (boomark / email).