The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Because nearly 25 percent of Tabor City's residents -- almost double the national average -- live in poverty, it's hard to imagine the Columbus County town turning down any legal means of boosting its economy.

But a prison?

The 2000 census shows that the average income for Tabor City residents is $13,000 a year. The national average is $22,000. It could just be a coincidence, but I doubt it, that an Associated Press story noted that only 63 percent of the town's residents have a high school education.

Here's something to ponder: If a prison can do all that is being expected of this one, just imagine what a school could do.

Alas, there is more political capital to be earned from building a prison, which enables politicians to pimp criminals, than there is in championing schools and education.

It's easy to pooh-pooh a city's trafficking in human misery when neither your town nor you face the economic devastation afflicting Tabor City.

Phil Freelon, a friend of mine and founder of the Freelon Group architectural firm in Durham, faced hard economic times 15 years ago -- as does anyone who starts a new business -- but he refused then, and refuses now, to design prisons.

Even if, I asked, he was broke and the future of his company depended upon prisons as a source of lucre?

"Fortunately, we never got to that point," Freelon said. "We've been blessed to the point where we never had to make a choice of doing a prison or putting food on the table."

Besides feeling that "our talents can be better used upstream, building schools," he said a reason for his rejection of prison design is the "disproportionate number of African-American men" in prison.

Right on.

There are, to be sure, practical benefits to having 1,000 prison inmates as neighbors. For one thing, guards earn higher wages -- they start at about $25,000 -- than the average suds buster or ditch digger.

For another, no matter how bad your day at work, when you drive home you can gaze over at the prison and know that somebody -- possibly everybody -- in there is having a worse day than you are.

Unless, that is, Sweet Thang is on the warpath because you didn't take out the trash or forgot her birthday.

Since the prison is a done deal and is scheduled to open in 2007, let me offer the people of Tabor City a piece of advice: Don't make the same mistake as Durham, which made its jail the best-looking, or at least most dominating, structure in town. Tuck that sucker back up in the woods where nobody can see it.

Tabor City residents have to eat, so it's unfair to begrudge them welcoming a steady revenue source to their town.

But man, there's got to be a better way than that.

Call Barry at 836-2811 or send him e-mail at barrys@newsobserver.com.

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