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| Closing its prison could stagger rural county |
| By miamiherald.typepad.com - Rick Stone |
| Published: 01/31/2012 |
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Florida -- What does a prison mean? In some places, it means everything. A rural north Florida community that went out on a limb to get its state prison is now about to lose it. Rick Stone reports on the struggle in Monticello. Late in the 80s, with crime rising and prisons filling up, Florida needed new prison sites but few counties wanted to be one. Jefferson County, just east of Tallahassee, was different. Then, as now, underpopulated and desperately poor, it saw an opportunity and it did something unusual. we welcomed them with open arms Kirk Reams is Jefferson's court clerk and chief financial officer. Our county commission went and bought this property, 300 acres, we went out and bought it and donated it to the state. In 1990, the county's gift became Jefferson Correctional Institution and JCI became the region's primary employer and economic engine. In a county of 14-thousand, about 200 people are directly employed by the prison -- that's six percent of the workforce -- and everybody else depends on it. But times have changed. Crime is down, prisons beds have fallen empty and the state has decided to close 11 prisons and work camps. Because of its low score on a comptimelicated point system, one of them is Jefferson Correctional. Read More. |
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