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Wyoming Prison Siting by Stephen Raher
January 24, 2005 1:42 PM
archivesStephen Raher reports from Riverton, Wyoming, where the city's plans to recruit a new state prison have sparked a debate on whether prisons are good for rural economies. [LISTEN]
ERIC WHITNEY: For the past few years, several hundred prisoners from Wyoming have been routinely housed in privately operated prisons on Colorado's eastern plains. The state of Wyoming wants to bring those inmates back, and that means building a new prison. As Western Skies' Stephen Raher reports, the question of where the new prison goes is sparking a debate on whether they're a benefit to rural economies.
STEPHEN RAHER: The City of Riverton, in central Wyoming, is surrounded by fields covered in a blanket of January snow. The landscape is incredibly quiet until you reach Main Street.
[traffic sounds]
RAHER: At nine thousand residents, Riverton is a hub for the county of thirty-five thousand people. It's also home to Wyoming's minimum-security prison farm, which houses 176 inmates. City leaders figure it's a good location for Wyoming's new medium-security prison. But, some local residents, such as Craig Blumenshine, are skeptical.
CRAIG BLUMENSHINE: I asked my son, initially, what he thought about it. He was a fifth grader at the time. And his response was, "well I don't want to be a prison town," essentially, and I think that was many of our responses as well.
RAHER: In 2004, Riverton asked the Department of Corrections to consider building a new prison here. Since then, relations between citizens and city government have been strained.
[sound of basketballs and children in gym]
RAHER: Janis Bradley is a PE teacher at the local elementary school. She was originally invited to be on a city committee that was considering the prison, but she says the group didn't want to talk about the potential negative impacts. She says things got off on the wrong foot when city officials came to a planning meeting that a group of citizens held at the local library.
JANIS BRADLEY: Just to see what we could do and what was coming out. And at that meeting, an ex-mayor came to the meeting. And I said, "excuse me, but this meeting is not for the people who are for the prison." And he shoved me and said "I'm coming in." When he shoved me, Kristy, my daughter, said "Leave my mom alone." And he shoved her.
RAHER: Personality conflicts aside, local business leaders say they're looking out for the best interests of the community. The current minimum security prison employs a little over thirty people, and the new prison could bring several hundred additional jobs.
[background talking and sound of an adding machine]
RAHER: Allen Moore is an accountant and business development leader in Riverton.
ALLEN MOORE: We know that there are a lot of people who could use jobs. We know that there are a lot of people who wouldn't chose to work for the Wyoming Department of Corrections, in any capacity. What we think is that people deserve to have an opportunity. And they deserve to have an opportunity to make a choice.
RAHER: But activists say a prison raises a lot of questions. Craig Blumenshine says some locals debated how much Sterling, Colorado benefited from their twenty-five hundred bed state prison.
BLUMENSHINE: Their school enrollments really haven't risen, in fact they've dropped. They've had a dramatic increase in rates of kids who qualify for the Federal free and reduced lunch program. So, you have to ask yourself some questions on these things that can be quantified. Has it been in the best interests of Sterling? And perhaps it has been, I'm not saying that it hasn't been, but it leads to questions.
RAHER: To answer those questions, Blumenshine looked for studies on whether prisons help rural economies. One, called "The Development of Last Resort," is about to be published in the Journal of the Community Development Society. The author, Terry Besser of Iowa State University, looked at economic indicators for small towns which received new state prisons during the 1990s and compared the data to same-sized towns nationwide that did not.
TERRY BESSER: They don't realize a net gain in employment or in reduction of poverty. Housing values don't go up as much as other towns. This is a pretty dismal outlook, for what at least happened in the '90s. The towns that had new state prisons seem to be in a worse situation than other comparable towns that didn't have new state prisons.
RAHER: But accountant Allen Moore says Riverton has yet to recover from the recession of the 1980s, when several large mines closed.
MOORE: We've spent a lot of time trying to attract out-of-state business to our area, and that is not a prospect that is easily accomplished. It takes an awful lot of time, it takes an awful lot of energy, and it takes an awful lot of money. And we have limited time, energy, and money.
RAHER: Riverton spent their time and energy, and some money, lobbying the Department of Corrections to pick their town. But the department ultimately recommended that the new prison be built in Torrington, on the Eastern edge of the state.
Riverton, however, is not giving up without a fight. The city government teamed up with the Town of Rawlins to ask the state legislature to set aside the Department's recommendation and build two smaller prisons one in Riverton and another in Rawlins.
Corrections Director Robert Lampert says that Torrington was the best choice.
ROBERT LAMPERT: The only thing I can say is that Riverton didn't score the highest. We looked at a hundred thirty-three areas of assessment and out of those hundred and thirty-three areas, Torrington is the one that scored the highest.
RAHER: So far, the legislature is siding with Lampert. On January 19, the Senate Judicial Committee voted to locate the new prison in Torrington. A final decision on where Wyoming's new prison will be built is expected by the end of the legislative session on March 3.
For Western Skies, I'm Stephen Raher, in Riverton, Wyoming.
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