Pine Bluff is in the news again, this time the national news. And it isn't good news. This cautionary tale about how the best of governmental intentions can bring the worst results was dramatic enough to make the New York Times wire service.
To begin at the hopeful beginning: "It was a win-win proposition, a redemption for wayward men in a city in need of redeeming. Inmates and parolees would get training and job skills for a new start; in turn this blight-plagued city in the Arkansas Delta would be freed of hundreds of abandoned homes, the unwanted souvenirs of decline."
Before the law of unintended consequences set in, all seemed to be going well, especially for the city, "as scores of eyesores were knocked down and carted away."
As for the prisoners involved, their dream soon enough turned into a dusty asbestos-laden nightmare. "They sold us on a dream," as one of the convicts recalled. He'd been in jail because he'd been charged with robbery. Like the others, according to the story in the Times, they'd "swung sledgehammers and hauled debris for months on end with the barest of training or protective gear, covering their mouths with sleeves amid clouds of shimmering and potentially toxic dust" swirling around them.
"In interviews," the story in the Times continued, "more than a half-dozen of the participants described being sent daily with scant protection into demolition sites presumed by the authorities to contain asbestos, which when inhaled in the slightest amounts can lead to incurable cancer. Similar operations in the private sector have led to criminal charges, environmental and workplace-safety experts said."
Sure enough, the federal Environmental Protection Agency dispatched inspectors to Pine Bluff back in May, and the agency sent a letter to the city threatening penalties for a whole set of health-and-safety violations. The city then shut down the program without much ado and certainly no publicity. As if it were ashamed of how the whole program had turned out. And ashamed it should have been.
To quote again from the story in the Times, "the inmates wore outfits picked from a local clothing drive, and at demolition sites they were handed hard hats, gloves, safety glasses and disposable dust masks to be used and reused for days--masks with a disclaimer on the packaging warning against use around airborne asbestos or lead particles." Next, the sledgehammers came out and the work began.
"On some days," the Times reported, "dust grew so thick that it would clog up the machinery, billowing up again even after a fire truck had come by, sprayed down the debris and left. The men began to ask for respirators, some of them having worked in construction, but the chief on-site supervisor, a state corrections official, spoke of tight costs or reminded workers they could always just go back to jail." Nice.
Win-win had seldom become lose-lose so effectively. And the mental scars may haunt them for the rest of their lives. "I think about it every day," says one of the convicts who was involved in the program. He's now at work cutting grass and "scared" is the word he uses to describe his state of mind.
It should be noted that the man in charge of the project over at the state of Arkansas says many of the statements by inmates just aren't true. What is true is that the project--once so promising--is shut down. And Pine Bluff remains one of the poorest cities in America plagued not only by rotting buildings but by a crime rate that should make the rest of us as scared as the man above.
We the People can't give up, not on programs similar to this one, not on other good ideas. Even if they don't always work. Pine Bluff is worth saving. So are its people. One day the rest of us will have to answer before a higher authority than any court, federal or state. Something tells us that He wouldn't say that giving up was an option.
Editorial on 08/17/2016