Fatimah Ali: Pa. needs to get back to work

IHATE to be a doomsayer, but here's the deal - unless the economy turns around pronto and more jobs are created across the nation, crime, including the illegal drug trade, will most likely increase.

Why? Because people are hungry and broke - and tired of not being able to find work. Particularly in Philadelphia neighborhoods like Kensington, where history tells us that the drug trade soared after the factories shut down, as the Inquirer recently made abundantly clear in a long Sunday story.

To make matters worse, when Tom Corbett takes office on Jan. 18, Pennsylvanians will have a governor who seems to believe that people continue to draw unemployment benefits because they'd rather do that than work, a view he unveiled on the campaign trail, while stumping for votes.

Even more depressing is that Corbett also plans to take aim at human services while seeking to trim the state government workforce in an effort to reduce Pennsylvania's $4 billion deficit.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes, minority chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says, "We must also understand that we've already cut out about $2.5 billion in state spending over the past 2 years, which means programs that were already helping people are now at the end of their fiscal rope, and the help that used to be available in many areas is dwindling away. All of this in an environment where the state unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, and people are suffering."

Gov.-elect Corbett's 50 bulleted campaign points describing how he planned to rebuild Pennsylvania cited job creation as a top priority. But he hasn't offered any real ideas on how he plans to accomplish this.

And he seems way out of touch with the working class. Unfortunately, he, like so many Republicans, thinks poverty and unemployment are a choice without considering what most job seekers already know - (and I repeat) there aren't enough jobs.

Trimming the state workforce will only further devastate Pennsylvania's bleak economy. And it will mean hunger in more homes, with more people losing them.

But there is one bright spot: the fact that crime translates into money for more than just the criminals who commit it.

America's prison-industrial complex has been one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation. According to a legislative analysis provided by Sen. Hughes, in 2007 and 2008 Pennsylvania led the nation in prison-population growth, at 9.1 percent.

Despite the fact that the state's inmate population dropped by a few hundred between January and November 2010, four new prisons are being built in Pennsylvania. This will allow the return of 2,000 of the state's inmates from Michigan and Virginia, where they're being housed because of Pennsylvania's prison overcrowding.

But I'm also thinking that they're being built because of more dire predictions by the government.

Lawmakers anticipate that because of the economy, crime will increase and two more prisons means job growth in places like Graterford and Fayette County, where some of the new jail cells will reside.

But, according to Hughes, neither the "tough on crime" nor the "three strikes" policies of the '90s prevented the growth of the nation's prison population, especially right here in the Keystone State. This same report states that nationwide, although the state and federal inmate population increased less than 1 percent from 2007 to 2008, Pennsylvania's was up the aforementioned 9.1 percent.

IF CORBETT'S pledge to downsize the state government is any indication of his thinking - coupled with his apparent blame-the-victim mentality - I get the sense that the new governor and his team of GOP lawmakers are not going to work out for middle-class or poor people.

And, as always, people will do what they have to do in order to survive, as indicated by recent stats from the Philadelphia Police Department showing that, while violent crime dropped by 3 percent, property crimes were up 4 percent.

We need to help the poor get real work - or become entrepreneurs and start their own (legal) businesses, which would surely help the state economy, instead of forcing them to pursue illegality.

Blossoming job-creation and entrepreneurship not only will help families become self-sustaining but also create more tax revenue for the state. And that would be a win for every one.

Fatimah Ali is a regular contributor to the Daily News, and blogs about food at healthysoutherncomforts.com.