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| Study: Prisons trigger growth |
| By Utica Observer Dispatch |
| Published: 08/27/2003 |
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Almost 30 percent of new residents who came to Upstate New York in the 1990s didn't make the trip by choice, and they didn't move into subdivisions or houses on secluded cul-de-sacs. They were inmates making their new homes in prison cells, according to a new report on population trends in upstate. That was perhaps the most striking statistic in a new report by the Brookings Institution documenting the stagnation of much of upstate, which grew in population just 1.1 percent in the '90s. But the report also highlighted areas of relative growth: the Hudson Valley from Orange to Warren counties, which grew 5 percent, and the Rochester area, which gained 3.3 percent in population. 'There's not just one Upstate New York. There are at least a couple,' said Rolf Pendall, author of 'Upstate New York's Population Plateau' and associate professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University. He defined upstate as everything north and west of Rockland and Putnam counties. There's an 'axis of growth' along the Hudson good share of the 74,000 overall new residents in upstate during the decade. In the Mohawk Valley, two prisons in Rome and two prisons in Marcy saw some growth during the 1990s. Marcy's two prisons added about 540 inmates during that decade, while Rome's two prisons housed about 2,500 inmates, meaning about 1-in-14 Rome residents were prisoners. Mary Ellen Keith, the 74-year-old town supervisor of Franklin in the Adirondacks, said the prisons are critical to her area. 'We have no business whatsoever to support our tax base,' Keith said. But the prisons have drawn workers to the area and provided jobs that pay well enough for people to build attractive houses. Her three adult sons all work in prisons, along with one of her six daughters and a granddaughter. Not everyone sees the flow of prisoners, many of whom come from Downstate, as a boon. 'It's absolutely a bad thing. It destroys the communities from which those prisoners come,' said Jennifer Wynn of the Correctional Association, which monitors prison conditions in New York. And some of the perceived benefits to upstate may be illusory. A recent analysis of unemployment rates and incomes in upstate counties with and without prisons found no major differences. That could be because prison jobs, construction work and other types of business tied to the prison don't always go to local people, said the report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington D.C. group that promotes alternatives to prisons. |
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