For decades, this state's rural counties could count on one cash crop never failing: a steady harvest of New York City's convicted criminals being sent north for incarceration. Many local upstate economies are built on reaping that rich yield, which is particularly abundant in its brown and black varieties.
Governor Nelson Rockefeller did his part, providing the fertilizer that assured there would be no shortage of new shoots springing from the city's soil. His notorious drug laws are synonymous with an overreaction to drug use; in his 1973 State of the State speech, he argued for life sentences for juvenile drug offenders.
But if Rockefeller plowed new ground, it was Mario Cuomo who made sure upstate counties were ready for whatever the city could gather: During the time he was governor, from 1983 to 1994, the state added more prison beds than all the previous governors in the state's history, combined. Cuomo built 29 correctional facilities--28 in Republican districts--and more than a dozen juvenile facilities as well. Overall, the state's prison population increased fivefold, and the juvenile population had its own steady increase.
Over time, two things became apparent: First, that conservative, upstate Senate districts were becoming as addicted to the jobs and money that come with prisons as any heroin junkie; second, that just about the worst way to deal with juvenile crime in New York City was to send young offenders to the dangerous hellholes that pass for juvenile facilities upstate.
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