[fluxquanta]

I find myself fighting with the morality of it all. I grew up with a lot of friends whose parents were prison guards. My hometown of Malone, NY is the site of 4 separate facilities (a state supermax, two state medium security, and the county jail). Add an hour or so to the commute and there were a few more that have closed in recent years. I always thought it was kind of cool as a sheltered white kid (that is, except the one time when a state trooper held me at shotgun point and searched my car for an escaped convict, and the whole Clinton Correctional escape and manhunt that happened last year). Some friends went down the same path themselves. It's a good middle-income job, and you get to leave all your work at the office, so to speak. These are all bad, guilty criminals from cities far away, anyway, so it's not like they don't deserve it (or so I thought).

Then, after growing older, going off to college, and meeting and becoming friends with people of color, I gained some perspective, and I have trouble accepting it as the cool, safe job it once appeared to be. But what are these prison guard friends I grew up with supposed to do? Fight against the system that puts food on their table so they can get laid off when the prison closes and have no other marketable skills?

In the end, I have to fall on the side of what's right; better laws on crime should force the prisons to be downsized or closed. More families suffer because of the incarcerations than would due to the potential jobs lost. I just wish our elected officials would/could do more to spur job growth in other industries.