Prison Valley: Why Rural Californians Want Correctional Facilities

To many of California’s economically struggling and politically isolated rural residents, prisons are welcome additions to their communities. Former New York Corrections Commissioner Thomas Coughlin claimed, “Prisons are… the anchor of development,” in a 1990 Newsweek interview. “People [in the Valley] for a very long time have felt a sense that we don’t matter,” argued James Gallagher, […]