Florence, Arizona, an hour’s drive southeast of Phoenix, is home to 10,000 people. Or maybe more like 25,000 people, depending on how you figure.
For what it’s worth, no less an authority than the U.S. Census Bureau choose the latter, including in their numbers as local Arizona residents the thousands of people in cells throughout the city. In fact, it’s how it counts inmates across the States, regardless of their actual state of origin. The discrepancy is just one variable in the matrix of how mass incarceration sets off ripple effects from individual to community to country whenever a prison comes to town. Particularly problematic are private prisons. Continue reading “The Private Prison Primer: A tale of two prison towns”
