Tuesday, June 05, 2007

The WalMart Solution

TX has found new uses for old state buildings and facilities. Turn them into prisons. The ones mentioned here seem appropriately suited, but there’s logically no reason why most deserted buildings couldn’t suffice, for some offenders and security levels anyway. We do the “old motel” thing a lot in OK for community corrections and minimum security, and it seems like I’ve heard of old “big box” buildings being used to house jail types (major supervision problems, as I recall). Maybe K-Mart could have a second life. Lord knows what might happen if WalMart gets into corr sent. Let’s just wait and see what Grits for Breakfast has to say about it.

2 comments:

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Two of the new facilities are actually old adult prisons that George Bush turned into youth prisons in the '90s now being re-converted (supposedly into DWI treatment facilities) in the wake of the Texas Youth Commission scandals. The other is an old VA hospital being turned into a womens mental health facility.

Haven't heard yet of any move to convert empty motels or old Kmarts, though there are plenty of them around (never thought of that one). best,

Gritsforbreakfast said...

I should mention, many old Kmarts and Safeways have been taken over in small Texas towns by county and district clerks - I've been to several counties where old court files and property records are now kept in former big box retail settings, now that I think about it. So we aren't seeing WalMart solutions for prisons, but more typically for the court system that supports it.