More On Stockton Prison Hospital Project.

The project is considerable. Building the Kelso hospital as proposed will spend $1.1 billion in the local economy, that does not count the DeWitt Nelson conversion. Both projects together combined with existing facilities will make CDCr the largest employer in San Joaquin County, with a total of 8,200 workers compared to the next largest employer, the county itself, with 6,500. Considering the massive unemployment problem in San Joaquin County the state people are surprised that the locals are angry (if the article is to be believed).

The locals want to pretend that Stockton is the garden spot of central California and would be a somewhat larger version of Mayberry ONLY IF the prison (DVI) and DJJ facilities were not there. It's not true of course. Stockton is a violent place. Much of the crime revolves around drugs and gangs. If you avoid the drug culture and it's participants (which is not that hard) and the gang bangers and their wannabes (which is harder, but possible) your chance of becoming a serious crime victim is not much larger (if any) than that in any other major city. Virtually all murder victims in Stockton in recent years have extensive criminal records themselves and were, for the most part, someplace they should not have been doing something they should not have been doing when they became victims themselves.

In any event it's a good article and has a couple of large pictures of Z-dorm in it, so go ahead and check it out. Clicking on the title will link to the article.