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| Lights Out at the Penitentiary |
| By wsj.com |
| Published: 09/08/2009 |
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KINCHELOE, Mich. -- Jeffrey Woods, warden of the Hiawatha Correctional Facility here at the eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, was vacationing on Lake Huron when his cellphone rang on July 1. The message from his boss: Hiawatha, which had been slated to shut down in October as part of a sweeping downsizing of the state's prison system, would now have to close by Aug. 7. That meant he had just five weeks to ship out 1,100 inmates and 207 staff. "I stopped sleeping" after that, says Mr. Woods, who kept a to-do list by his bed and wrote down new tasks when he was jolted awake in the middle of the night. The scramble to empty Hiawatha prison is part of a rapid shift in thinking about how many people should be locked up in the U.S., and for what crimes. For three decades, state and local governments built and filled jails to make good on promises to get tough on crime. Now, the recession and collapsing budgets are forcing an about face. Read More. |
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