"Less Crime: No Reason To Shut Prisons"

Our long-time grantee, the Correctional Association of New York, is quoted in this article by Jim Dwyer for the New York Times, April 12, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/nyregion/12about.html

... Last year, Governor Spitzer proposed that the Legislature set up a commission to study which prisons were needed, to make plans to help the communities where they would be closed and then to openly vote for an entire package. The Legislature declined. The question of prison closings returned to the back room.

“It’s really a jobs programs for economically depressed upstate communities,” said Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit organization that has oversight responsibilities for the prisons. “But it’s a jobs program that has a direct negative effect on people’s lives. It’s not like the manufacturer of widgets. It’s based on the warehousing of human beings that has very negative effects.” ...

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