Word: standish
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...decline to several factors, including an overall drop in crime, the placement of more people on parole and a lower recidivism rate. But in June, as the state's budget crisis deepened, Michigan announced that it would close eight prison facilities by the end of the year, including Standish, which could save some $30 million annually. Standish is expected to be shut down by the end of October, and many of the 600 inmates are already being dispersed to other facilities. Officials here say importing prisoners is a way to profitably use a facility that would otherwise be empty...
...states that are positioning themselves as a destination for a number of the 216 detainees who are being held at Guantánamo Bay. President Obama has pledged to close the detention facility, although a precise timetable has yet to be completed. Federal officials toured Standish at least once last summer. Granholm said she told the officials that she wasn't going to be open to the idea "unless they could demonstrate this wouldn't put a target on Michigan. It'd be a difficult sell, politically." David Fathi, U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch in Washington, urges caution...
...prospect of losing its prison has put the city of Standish, pop. 1,400 (excluding inmates), on edge. Nearly two decades ago, the town's residents were torn about whether the prison should even be built. But it quickly became an alternative to the dwindling auto industry. It's currently the city's largest employer, and the facility accounts for roughly 35% of the city's budget. Now prison guards are dreading the prospect of commuting five hours a day to the nearest job, if they can find one, or leaving Michigan altogether...
Kevin King, Standish's mayor for the past six years, says most of his constituents want domestic inmates. But accepting detainees from Guantánamo Bay, he says, "is a whole different ball of wax." At community meetings in recent months, King says he has made the point to skeptics that terrorists have long been housed at U.S. prisons, and "you can't recite one terrorist attack by people trying to get out." He says he has received assurances from federal officials that should detainees be brought to Standish, no land near the prison would be seized to expand...
Still, King wants whatever business his town can get. With the number of empty homes in Standish rising, when the prison closes, he says, "it's going to snowball." Says King, after returning home from his teaching job one recent evening: "The No. 1 option is to keep the prison open. It doesn't really matter who pays the bills...