Prisons promised rural economic revival but delivered neither jobs nor revitalization
Evidence
California’s new prisons are sited on devalued rural land, most, in fact on formerly irrigated agricultural acres … The State bought land sold by big landowners. And the State assured the small, depressed towns now shadowed by prisons that the new, recession-proof, non-polluting industry would jump-start local redevelopment. … But, as Gilmore points out, neither the jobs nor the more general economic revitalization promised by prisons has occurred. At the same time, this promise of progress helps us to understand why the legislature and California’s voters decided to approve the construction of all these new prisons. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 26
Categorization
- XREF: Mirrors the promised-but-failed-development pattern seen in the Honduran outsourcing cases. — connects to: Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit; Liberation promises without material redistribution leave peasants uncomprehending and re-criminalized
Related
- Liberation promises without material redistribution leave peasants uncomprehending and re-criminalized (similarity 0.84)
- California prison expansion responded to surpluses of capital, land, labor, and state capacity (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit
#complicates(0.30)