The ancient Western Penitentiary moldering in dilapidated ruin beside the polluted Allegheny River at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was finally supposed to closed. The grim monstrosity was built when Indians still commonly roamed Western Pennsylvania. It's dangerous and crumbling, a monument to cruel human warehousing. But prisons are a cash cow and Pennsylvania politicians know it. Local Pittsburgh politicians campaigned long and hard to keep Western Penitentiary going. They care nothing about human misery. They care nothing about rehabilitation. They care nothing about reform. What the politicians care about is using prisoners to make money and provide jobs to jailers. Of course money won out over morality. We're talking about politicians here. A scheme was hatched to continue to use part of Western Penitentiary. The name would be changed. It would be called a "halfway house!" The tale is that prisoners would be released from, or paroled from another prison. They will be sent to the so-called halfway house. It's a way of expanding the prison system without it looking like another expansion. Pennsylvania's imprisonment industry is a complete failure. It improves nothing. Like a tumor it grows endlessly. Old prisons never die. They continue to absorb tax money, not because they're needed, but as a way of giving employment to the drones who won't find decent jobs.