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The Lucas County commissioners and their consultants
continue to evaluate potential sites for the construction of
a new Lucas County jail after being made aware of
“restrictions” which do not allow them to build at their
preferred site located at Central Avenue at Jeep Parkway.
To the surprise of the commissioners and several members of
the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, an “agreement” with
the developer of the Overland Industrial Park exists that
restricts usage of the land at the old 111-acre former Jeep
factory site to manufacturing and manufacturing-related
uses. The project to construct a more modern and humane
low-rise jail facility with a 600-bed capacity will require
anywhere between 10 and 20 acres of land.
The decisions surrounding the construction of the new jail
in Toledo are taking place under the radar and little
attention is being paid to the costs, dynamics and damaging
collateral effects of incarceration.
More than 2.4 million men, women and children are
incarcerated in nearly 5,000 custodial institutions
throughout the United States, the overwhelming majority for
low-level drug sales or possession. Of these 2.4 million
offenders, approximately 800,000 individuals are housed in
local jails, awaiting trial, sentencing or serving
short-term periods of confinement of less than 12 months.
The United States now employs approximately 750,000 men and
women and spends more than $60 billion annually on
corrections. When budget items for local law enforcement,
courts, legal, community supervision, i.e. probation
departments and other related staff and facilities, are
added in, the criminal justice system appears to have
replaced the manufacturing sector to perhaps become the
largest segment of our economy.
However, here is the rub.
It is well known that in many states, investment in
corrections exceeds that to educate our college-age
citizens. Increasing spending in jails and prison often
requires us to, in effect, disinvest or withdraw money from
educational and other institutions that transmit knowledge
and skills necessary for building and developing social
capital that empowers rather than excludes young people of
color from the mainstream.
The process driving this economic boom requires locking up
ever-increasing numbers of young black men from impoverished
neighborhoods. The concentration of urban young black males
is so extreme that we automatically experience fear of every
young man we encounter and assume that each has a criminal
record.
Mass incarceration, while having a small or negligible
impact on crime, has become so salient in impoverished
communities that inner city youth are “more likely to know
someone who has been involved in the criminal justice system
than to know someone who is employed in a profession, such
as law or medicine.”
The damage to these poor communities is troubling.
The cycling of young blacks through the prison system makes
going to prison an acceptable and common way of life in poor
communities or neighborhoods. The children of this “prison
generation” grow up angry and defiant in families “hardly
ever without a son, uncle, or father who has done prison
time.”
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this new economy of the
prison is its regressive, redistributive process which
diverts and redirects resources and opportunities away from
disadvantaged communities and the children and families who
live there to majority communities who already possess
relative advantages.
As Lucas County and its consultants evaluate potential sites
for new jail construction, they have a moral obligation to
realistically look at the comparisons between the
communities from which prisoners typically come from and the
locations of the new jail settings to which they will go.
One thing is known. New structures of opportunity will be
created around the project as the construction and operation
of the jail will spur development of multiple offshoot small
businesses in the neighborhood as well as add new jobs and
additional construction and jail employment. New social
networks will also evolve to provide points of access into
the “new economy of the prison.”
If Lucas County is serious and sensitive to the needs of all
of its residents, then they will understand the injustice of
supplying the economy of the new jail disproportionately
from disadvantaged minority communities without reinvesting
into these same communities that have been devastated by
policies dependent on more black and brown arrests to keep
up the revenues necessary to support jail operations.
If public dollars are to be invested in the local prison
industrial complex, then surely this investment must benefit
poor communities of color rather than continuing to exploit
them.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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