Prison Town Locked Into Role as Home to Nation’s Toughest Felons : Colorado: Florence campaigned for the federal complex, which includes a maximum-security section that is still under construction. Community is making crime pay.

Crime may not pay, but having criminals as neighbors has certainly helped the residents of Florence pay some bills.

When it comes to prisons, many communities develop the “nimby” syndrome (not in my back yard).

Not Florence.

A new prison complex helped the town buy a new water system. It helped restore the Rialto Theatre, and it helped residents build a new golf course.

“There’s no doubt crime pays,” said Darrell Lindsey, executive director of the Florence Chamber of Commerce. “Florence is on the map big-time.”

The town’s fortunes rose when the federal government announced it was trying to find a home for a $168.5-million prison complex to house some of the nation’s toughest criminals.

Residents of this southern Colorado community of 3,450 raised more than $130,000, bought the land and staked their claim. The federal government liked the arrangement and built prisons to accommodate more than 2,300 inmates.

Included in the complex is a new maximum-security federal penitentiary still under construction. It will house 484 criminals, described by the government as the “most difficult inmates to manage.” It will replace the penitentiary at Marion, Ill. Before that, Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay housed the nation’s worst inmates.

More than half the inmates at Marion have a history of murder, and a fourth of them have a history of prison murder. Only 3% have no history of escape, assault or murder.

The complex also includes a 500-bed minimum-security federal prison camp, which opened in July; an 818-bed medium-security prison that opened in January and is already over capacity, and a 1,024-bed, high-security penitentiary scheduled to open early this year.

More than half the inmates in the medium-security prison are serving time for drug and liquor violations, 14% for robbery, and 10% for arms, explosives and arson.

For many residents, it was a marriage made in heaven. The area already is home to eight of the state Department of Corrections’ 16 prisons, and 3,320 of the Colorado system’s 7,416 beds. But most of them are located closer to Canon City to the north, a rival for prison commerce.

With the new federal prison, Florence residents say they’ve now overtaken Canon City as the state prison capital.

“It hasn’t been as big a success as we would have liked, but it’s better than we hoped for,” says Bob Wood, editor of the weekly Florence Citizen.

County sales tax revenues have risen 11.2%, compared with 1987, and city sales tax revenues are up 16.7%. More than 60 new homes are being built, at prices ranging from $75,000 to $115,000.

But the city also acquired its second traffic light, and it’s tough to find parking, especially on payday. The city even recorded its first gang fight.

Florence City Manager Ken Bruch predicted it will take about five years for the full impact of the new prison to hit the community.

City officials toured a similar federal facility in Sheridan, Ore., and hoped to learn from that community’s experience.

Bruch said the biggest mistake Florence has made so far is failing to lure home builders. As a result, nearby Canon City, Pueblo and even Colorado Springs, 50 miles to the northeast, reaped many of the benefits of the new prison.

The prison hired 170 local workers and transferred 160 from around the nation. Of those, 177 located in Fremont County, 86 in Pueblo County, and 67 in El Paso County.

“If we made a mistake, it was in not getting housing construction started sooner,” Bruch said.

The city manager said the town won’t repeat one mistake it made earlier this century, relying for jobs on the coal and oil industries, which went bust in the early 1900s and again in the 1980s.

“Coal mining went downhill because of environmental problems, and oil fields don’t last forever,” Bruch said.

“Prisons are more stable. Prisons have been here for more than 100 years, and I guess they’ll always be here.”

So far, more than 300 minimum-security inmates have moved into the prison camp. The facility’s new medium-security prison is bursting at the seams with more than 1,140 inmates, and looks more like a college campus than a prison.

More than 200 inmates work in the prison’s furniture factory, making office chairs for government agencies. Inmates earn up to $1.15 an hour, and receive a credit card that can be used in the prison commissary to purchase such items as tennis shoes and jogging shorts.

The facility has two staff physicians, two dentists and eight physicians’ assistants.

Twice a week, inmates can get all the soft drinks they want and graze the fruit bar and salad bar. Staff members get the same food as the inmates.

Inmates also can obtain government grants to pay for college courses in business management.

Guards carry no guns inside the fence to reduce tensions with inmates.

“The college campus atmosphere is not the image we’d like to foster,” said Julie W. Alba, executive assistant of the Federal Correctional Institution. But, she added, “For a medium-security facility, it works better to have a physical structure more open.

“The image looks nice, but it’s hard to get the flavor of what it means to spend 10 years here.”