Across the country politicians who represent rural areas are outraged at jobs being lost due to prison closures. In New York State alone, there are currently six prisons scheduled for closure. Closures of prisons is largely the result of a long-term decline in rates of violent crime in US cities. Prison populations are also likely to fall even further, as a result of multiple states decriminalizing marijuana, which makes it harder for urban police departments to arrest large numbers of Black men and women and have them sentenced to time in prison on bogus marijuana charges.

The solution is simple: instead of trying to boost rural economies by filling American prisons with black people who were arrested for a string of petty drug charges, let’s start filling American prisons with rural whites who traffic in illegal firearms, commit hate crimes, and threaten to maim and murder public officials.

Lack of punishment for white criminals is one of the most insidious aspects of the problem of white privilege. Recently, news outlets in the US were excited to cover reports of a January 6th rioter getting the “longest sentence yet” in trials of those who attacked the US Capitol building. That sentence was a paltry 63 months: five years and three months for repeatedly bashing Capitol Police officers over head with a fire extinguisher with the intent to cause serious bodily harm.  Many other January 6th rioters were let off with probation or home confinement. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress frequently complain that January 6th rioters are receiving “draconian punishment”, apparently unaware that in a truly authoritarian country that employed “draconian punishments”, the rioters would have been pulled out of the building on January 6th, immediately put into makeshift prison camps, and then executed.

In a prior article, this author suggested a number of revisions to the Federal Statute 18 USC § 2332b to address the problem of domestic terrorism, and I continue to stand by the revisions suggested in that article. Ending the practice of using bogus marijuana charges to fill our nation’s prisons, along with the insidious influence of white privilege which allows domestic terrorists to skate by with minimal penalties will help to make our nation safer, and help to provide jobs for rural Americans by putting our nation’s most dangerous criminals where they belong: in prison.