The Adirondacks and northern New York is the most economically depressed area of New York state, mainly because of its previous reliance on manufacturing (which has collapsed in the northeast) and on industries like logging and mining which are subject to volatile worldwide price fluctuations. Some towns, like Lake Placid and Lake George, have embraced mass tourism. Others have tried to better market their natural wonders to suburban and city folk from other regions.
Dazzled by huge sums of money and the prospect of employment, some towns have embraced the prison-industrial complex as an economic panacea. The Atlantic magazine had a very enlightening investigation of this booming national industry. America incarcerates more of its population than any other western country.
New York's prisons are particularly crowded because of its Rockefeller Drug Laws. These laws are so medieval that even the governor and Assembly speaker, who normally squabble like a pair of six year olds, agree they need to be revamped. Drug crimes, even minor ones like possession of small amounts, now account for 38 percent of the state's prison population.
However much like with casino gambling, areas who bought into the prison-industrial complex are finding out about the unintended consequences. An area with a large population of prisoners soon becomes an area with a large population of FORMER prisoners.
An article in the Glens Falls Post-Star offers a chilling reminder of this fact.
The paper reported: Police in Washington County have uncovered evidence of three chapters of nationwide street gangs in the region, including two chapters of the feared Bloods gang, officials said Monday.
A 14-year-old boy who was arrested recently on charges he spraypainted a street gang symbol on a fuel tank off Clay Hill Road in Fort Ann told police that he is a member of a local chapter of the nationwide Bloods street gang, officials said.
The teen, whose name was not released, told Washington County sheriff's officers he spraypainted the letters "ES" on the tank to represent the "Emia Squad" chapter of the Bloods, said Washington County Sheriff Roger Leclaire.
The teen told police there were about 70 members of the Bloods chapter in Hudson Falls, Fort Edward and Glens Falls, and that they were involved in marijuana trafficking in the region, said sheriff's Deputy Terry Markham, the department's gang specialist.
Where did this problem come from?
An inmate in Washington County jail who'd served time in state prison.
The deputy police chief in Hudson Falls, also in Washington County, noted, "When these kids go to jail, they are in there with actual gang members, who are recruiting all the time."
Rather than being a deterrent, prison appears to be a social networking device linking previously non-violent people with hard core criminals.
If this isn't evidence of the failure of the state's drug laws, I don't know what is.
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