New York Times turns to rural California prison closure

I've written about the proposed closure of a prison in Susanville, California here and here. Now, the New York Times has sent Tim Arango to cover the issue, and he has filed a terrific story that appears on the front page and leads with the economic impact on the community. I'm going to highlight here what Arango reports on the legal efforts to stop the prison closure:

On a brisk late-fall evening, Ms. Cobb huddled with a group of public officials and prison workers at a pizzeria. As a waitress came in and out, carrying pizzas and beers, Ms. Cobb ran down the fund-raising: $7,700 so far, mostly from small donations.

The lawsuit has achieved an early victory: a local judge has issued a temporary injunction halting plans for closing the prison while the case moves through the courts.

The injunction issued by the Lassen County judge is interesting. It's a lot of power to be wielded by a little old trial judge in rural northern California (which reminds me of this recent story out of Lake County, California).

Here's what he says about the economic impact of the prison, also giving a flavor of the place: 

When the California Correctional Center was built in the 1960s, many people in Susanville, which cherishes its small-town way of life — “we’re not rural, we’re frontier,” said one resident — relied on jobs at the nearby sawmills and on cattle ranches. Those jobs eventually disappeared, and now almost every aspect of the town’s economy and civic life, from real estate to local schools, depends on the prison. Over the years, the inmate population has counted toward political representation, and factored into the amount of money the town received from federal pandemic relief funds and state money to fix roads.