From “New York Has Some Prisons To Sell You,” Thomas Kaplan’s NYT article about the Governor Cuomo’s attempts to dismantle the state’s prison-industrial complex:

“These real-estate listings come from an unpracticed seller, the State of New York. After cutting costs through traditional means like freezing wages of state workers and consolidating government offices, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is embarking on a less conventional effort: trying to sell New York’s old prisons.

The state has a glut of vacant correctional facilities because of lower crime rates, new programs that allow early release for nonviolent offenders and the dismantling of its strict drug laws. The situation in New York reflects changing national attitudes toward criminal justice policy: the number of state prisoners nationwide declined in 2009 and 2010 for the first times in at least three decades, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, Gov. David A. Paterson, closed three prisons as he confronted budget problems. Mr. Cuomo declared in his first address to the State Legislature that prisons were “not an employment program,” and proceeded to shut seven of the state’s remaining 67 correctional facilities, removing 3,800 beds.

These closings reflect a sharp reversal. After New York adopted mandatory drug sentences in 1973, the state’s prison population soared from 13,437 to a peak of 71,472 in 1999, prompting a boom in prison construction, much of it during the tenure of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the current governor’s father. But since then, the number of inmates in state facilities has fallen nearly a quarter, to about 55,000, leaving thousands of empty beds.”