Research shows it's not easy to save a prison

It appears that several readers of this blogcolumn would like me to do lots more research before developing the opinions which are published on this Web site and in the Watertown Daily Times next to my professionally altered mugshot. Can't do it.

I have a full-time job as the St. Lawrence County editor for the Times. This blogcolumn thing is sort of a hobby that I shoehorn in during the gaps of time I have left between meetings with bosses, yelling at reporters or fixing the toilet in the Canton office where I work. My researching is limited by time and the fact that I am generally lazier than a three-toed South American sloth.

Last week, for instance, I wrote that people were wasting their time by trying to save the Ogdensburg prison that is scheduled to close next year. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/section/blogs06 I formed this opinion after reading one quote that reporter Jude Seymour pulled from Gov. David A. Paterson during a recent interview:

“This is a difficult situation. Any other time, we would probably keep the facilities open just to maintain the financial integrity of the local governments, the villages and the towns. Here we would do it, but we don't have the money.”

I read that quote several times before writing the blogcolumn. And I literally spent minutes reading a press release from the state that said fewer prisons are needed because we have fewer prisoners being housed these days. So it is not like I didn't do any research. We don't have the money. We don't need the prisons. Bye-bye Ogdensburg Correctional Facility. It all seemed pretty simple.

Readers who wrote wanted more. Many of them focused on the reason we have fewer prisoners – primarily state laws that reduced sentences for those who commit “low-level crimes.” A veteran corrections officer said the public is being “hoodwinked” because many of those released are not low-level offenders. He invited me to come see the scary group of early release candidates he watches over in Ogdensburg.

I took a pass. Seeing criminals in prison wouldn't help me form an opinion about whether reform of the state's drug laws – one of the changes that led to fewer inmates – was a good idea. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. I am sure there are good arguments on both sides. But figuring that out would have taken a lot more time than my hobby allows. I remain without an opinion on the issue.

Same goes for the issue of whether prisons are economic booms or busts for a community. A brief check of the Internet and you'll find that there are professors out there who have studied it and say prisons don't have much of an impact. And there are others who say they do. I have no idea who is right. That's why I didn't write much about it.

I did write that Ogdensburg was a sad place before it had prisons and remains pretty sad after getting them. I didn't say Ogdensburg was a bad place, I said it was a sad place. It's sad because it lost its tax base years ago when a bunch of industry left town. It's sad because it has a beautiful chunk of riverfront land that is mostly full of decaying, empty buildings or prisons. It's sad because it isn't – and will never again be - what it once was.

If you believe that keeping the prison open might change things, or at least stop things from getting sadder, join the growing fight to save it. I am just saying my research shows it's not a fight you should expect to win.