By Larry Rayle Sr.

Living In the Shadow of a Prison

 Sixty of my seventy years were lived beside Sandy Ridge Prison. You can never relax for every noise at night could be an escapee. Everything must be under lock and key. An escapee is always a threat to family members. A loaded gun is a necessity. The less hardened the criminals, the more frequent the dangers. Long term inmates are kept under tight guard, but trustees have free reign in the prison yard and many times your yard also.

When Sandy Ridge was still stripes, ball and chain, a “striper” hurried across our field, threw his ball tied to his chain over our pasture fence and climbed over after it. He shuffled out of sight down through the pasture. Grandma sent Grandpa, who was feeble from a stroke, creeping up the road to tell the prison officials because there were no phones. After a long while there was a guard with some free time who finally went after the escapee.

Mr. Jones the neighbor across the road, called my father’s house one night after dark to say that someone was on his porch. My dad grabbed his gun and told my mother to call me. I grabbed my gun and raced across the field. My dad came in from the south; I came in from the north and trapped the guy on the porch. Mr. Jones was shaking so that I feared he might accidentally shoot the guy. The guy was on his knees begging, “Don’t shoot me, don’t kill me!” When the dog cage (the truck that hauled the bloodhounds and the prisoners) came, he jumped in the back and hid in the corner. Needless to say for a while no one came outside the fence at night.

These are not the worst things about living near a prison. The worst thing is the constant traffic of their friends and family coming by and dropping off alcohol, drugs, goodies and sometimes even stopping to have sex.  It’s not that I’m against a “good time”, but I think it should come off at the end of their sentence.

These visitors often pose more of a threat than even the inmate himself because they are free and can easily pillage all the homes in the neighborhood because on their way in and out they are not under the watchful eye of any authority. 

A quiet residential neighborhood does not need to wrestle prisoners for their exercise.

Bad Signs

The Weakness of the Zoning Argument

The land was originally intended for the establishment of a community school in Sandy Ridge. This school was built and used until the construction of Colfax School in the mid 1920’s

When the county started to construct new roads in the area, they used the county prisoners as their workforce. These prisoners would sleep in wagons that were drawn up on the school property because of its convenient central location.

When the county school was moved to Colfax in the mid 1920’s, the highway department assumed ownership of the land. At this time there was no separation between the highway department and the prison department. The highway department then built permanent prisons to house their delinquent workforce instead of the wagons used in the past.  So what once was a county school turned into a county prison.

By the mid 1930’s the current structures were built and the fence erected. These buildings were in use until 5 or so years ago. At that time the structures were vacated because the cost of bringing them up to county building code was simply too high to be cost effective.

The points to keep in mind are as follows: