| Generally, when I hear about jobs that are lost because a business closes or government cuts a program, I am bummed. It's usually not a good thing for the loss of an entire industry to a region. Sometimes, though, we should rejoice. For example, the decrease in crime in New York City has led to a decreased need for prisons and juvenile detention facilities. Who could not be happy about that? Well, people in upstate New York, where small town economies rely entirely on incarcerating New York City residents. This is perverse in many ways. |
Upstate legislators and union officials refuse to close empty facilities because they don't like the loss of jobs (prison guards, cooks, etc) in their region. This has been an ongoing problem for years, but it has reached the breaking point because our budget gap provides glaring evidence of how wasteful this is. (The moral implications are even worse because politicians and unions advocate for more severe forms of incarceration than necessary just so they can keep their jobs.) Jim Dwyer wrote in The New York Times today about a juvenile detention facility in Goshen, NY. The facility holds six boys. To watch over these young men, a cadre of "11 cooks, 1 food manager, 6 keyboard specialists, 5 nurses, 1 motor mechanic, 7 teachers, 1 teaching assistant, 4 vocational instructors, 3 recreation specialists, 81 youth division aides and 2 calculations clerks" and one principal accounting clerk are employed. It would be unfortunate for these 155 people to lose their jobs. But the union says that they get one year notice before the state can even consider shutting the facility (which, incidentally, was cited last year for the brutal treatment of residents by the US Justice Department, which on second thought, makes me not sorry that these people will lose their jobs.) Any words that are uttered about closing are met with intense resistance by politicians and union officials. I didn't live in New York City when it went through its severe budget crisis. However, I have heard many times about the heroic efforts of elected officials, unions, and corporations to band together to find real solutions to the problems. I wish that people throughout the rest of New York state had that kind of moral courage. The fact that we rely on criminal behavior to maintain our economy is disgusting. |
