Here's a question that occurred to me...

...While listening to NPR during a trip to town today. What does it say about a society, when the prison industry gets so big it becomes a major part of the economy? When a closing prison causes such financial hardship for a town that they'll do anything, however immoral or nonsensical, to get their prison back?

STANDISH, Mich. — To many people struggling in this job-starved part of rural Michigan, unemployment is a bigger threat than terrorists.

With unemployment at more than 17 percent, many residents say they would welcome detainees from Guantanamo Bay in order to save the 280 jobs at a prison scheduled to close because of state budget cuts.

"We'll take the most dangerous prisoners the world has to offer if we have to," corrections officer Paul Piche said Monday.
...
The reaction was far more positive in Michigan, where signs outside many businesses and even a Catholic church bear the message: "Save Standish Max."

"Anything that keeps the prison open is fine with me," said Perry Pelton, owner of Wheeler's Restaurant on Main Street.

A third-generation resident of the area, 48-year-old Pelton said he lived less than 2 miles from the prison and wasn't worried about the Guantanamo inmates escaping. The facility is surrounded by a 16-foot-high double chain link fence with razor-ribbon wire. There are five gun towers, and armed guards constantly patrol the perimeter in a vehicle.

"No one's ever gotten out of there," he said. "They've got a 19-year track record since that place opened, and they'd probably have even tighter security if we get these al-Qaida people."

The prison holds about 600 inmates and is the top employer in the community about 145 miles northwest of Detroit.

Quite setting aside any arguments about the Guantanamo debacle ("Worst of the worst" vs. some poor innocent schmo kidnapped and sold to vengeful Americans, give'em a trial to appease the squeamish but then lock'em up forever anyway, etc), it was the irony of the thing - not to mention the sheer, horrid hardcore mercenary viciousness of these lovely Christian whitebread ... Oh, no adjective is sufficiently monitor-melting to describe my attitude toward these people.

I listened to the NPR piece, then Googled for a news story, which covers pretty much the same ground with entirely the same lack of irony. Locking people in prison, largely for non-violent, non-coercive crimes, has become such big business that entire communities thrive on it.

And nobody sees anything even slightly wrong with that.