|
|
| For the first time, Texas closes a prison |
| By yourhoustonnews.com |
| Published: 08/12/2011 |
|
SUGAR LAND — History is being made on a former sugar cane plantation in suburban Houston with the dismantling of a piece of Texas history. The last 92 of several hundred inmates were cleared out of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Central Unit west of Houston in Fort Bend County last week, marking the first time ever tough-on-crime Texas has shut a prison without replacing it. The site now is without prisoners for the first time since convicts were brought in some 130 years ago to work the sugar fields for owners of a plantation that eventually would wind up as state property and in the 1930s become a jewel of the Texas prison system. “I never thought it would ever happen,” Steve Massie, an assistant regional director for the Texas corrections department, said Thursday, accompanying reporters through the antiquated lockup. “It’s an historic place.” “It’s kind of sad,” Senior Warden Herman Weston said. He’s awaiting assignment to another prison after two years at the Central Unit. Inmates are being absorbed into the remaining 111 Texas prisons holding some 156,000 convicts. The land has become increasing valuable in recent years and has been appraised at more than $10 million. Officials in Sugar Land, a booming Houston suburb, see it as home to an expansion of the city airport, at the prison’s east edge, where the runways handle private and corporate aircraft. Developers also see it a possible business park. Read More. |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think