Monday, July 13, 2020

These numbers are not good


In Watonga, Okla., the ratio of women older than 18 to men over 18 is 100/191. That is a disparity the likes of which I have never before seen. A town with almost twice as many women as men is a harbinger of problems.

The town’s population decreased by 2,252 between the 2010 Census and the 2018 estimate – 5,111 residents in 2010 and 2,859 eight years later, a 44 percent decrease.

“The city hosted the Diamondback Correctional Facility, owned by the Corrections Corporation of America from 1998, and the prison grew to become the town's largest employer. But the prison, housing Arizona inmates, experienced a riot in May 2004, and the contract to utilize the facility was not renewed, resulting in the prison closing in May 2010. This left 300 prison workers jobless or transferred elsewhere. The prison was still vacant as of March 2017.
“The town Walmart closed in 2016.”

The first prisoners housed in the Diamondback facility were from Hawaii and Indiana. I knew Pacific Islanders and Indianans in the Army, where everybody insulted everybody. It was part of the culture. In civilian life, those same remarks are ethnic insults, often leading to fights, or riots if behind prison walls.  
Watonga is county seat for Blaine County. Since the 2010 Census, the county population dropped 20.6 percent, around 2,500 people. In Blaine County, there are 125 adult men for every 100 women 18 or older.




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