As the carceral entrepreneur—himself an ex-prisoner— explained how much good the prison would bring to South Central, the ROCers listened closely. Then, in an orderly show of po- litical passion, each one told him why, from her perspective, the ROC would never endorse the facility. His claim that somehow the community could control the inner workings of a prison because of its location struck them as ludicrous; they had learned that distance is not simply measured in miles, and that the prison would not be a neighborhood or community facility, but rather a state incapacitation facility run according to state rules. His promise that perhaps their own children might be in the prison elicited, at first, an emotional moment of hope on the part of some women, who drove fifteen-year-old cars four hundred miles round-trip on Saturdays to see their sons. But the record of failures in many of the campaigns to have children moved closer to their families indicated that the people in the proposed South Central prison would not likely come from the area. The ROC told the entrepreneur, over and over, that they would not remedy the disappearance of jobs at GM, Firestone, and Kaiser by putting half the population into prisons so the other half could make money watching them. They sent him on his way, somewhat bruised by their blunt words.