Category Archives: Economy

Private prisons do not increase local employment

According to an empirical study, siting a private prison in a rural county does not increase employment. (Big Prisons, Small Towns: Prison Economics in Rural America by Ryan S. King, Marc Mauer and Tracy Huling, February 2003.)

Their Key Findings:

Overall, over the course of 25 years, we find no significant difference or discernible pattern of economic trends between the seven rural counties in New York that hosted a prison and the seven rural counties that did not host a prison. While prisons clearly create new jobs, these benefits do not aid the host county to any substantial degree since local residents are not necessarily in a position to be hired for these jobs. The most significant findings are as follows:
They go on to detail effects on unemployment during economic recovery, downturn, and boom, and in each period Continue reading →

Wiregrass Technical College @ VLCIA 15 March 2011

Wiregrass Technical College wants to expand onto some land owned by the Industrial Authority, using SPLOST funds.

Chairman Jerry Jennett:

The point is they’re landlocked.

And so what you want to do is you want to take what your tract is now and have the ability to expand your building in the future. You want to move your training facility now and….

More transcription after the video:


Regular monthly meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority, VLCIA,
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Brad Lofton Executive Director,
Allan Ricketts Program Manager, 15 March 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Roy Copeland: Continue reading →

What’s the value of inmates?

Cheap labor. And not just unskilled labor. Brennan Leathers wrote in The Post-Searchlight on 18 February 2011, Inmate housing a hot topic about how overcrowded nearby prisons are and about haggling over what the local jail wants to charge to house prisoners, and ended with this:
“Working our inmates the way we do has greatly benefited the county,” [Warden Elijah] McCoy [of the Decatur County Jail] said. “We can construct buildings from the ground up and wire them. We perform all of the county’s maintenance and operate some of the equipment at the county’s landfill.”
One of the comments from Decatur County way back in July 2010 was:
Not only prison jobs, but it would also be a boost for many small businesses in the area. The construction part would also be a good shot in the arm.
Local construction people who think it will be a good deal to build a private prison maybe should think they may be putting themselves out of a lot of jobs after it’s built.

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The plummeting cost of solar electricity

Computers are so small and cheap these days that the phone in your pocket has more computing power than the biggest corporate computers of a few decades ago. A similar phenomenon is driving down the cost of solar electricity. Ramez Naam writes in ScientificAmerican, Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells? Here’s a summary in one diagram:

Solar may not be the most affordable power source today, but wait a few years and it will be. Or get on with organizing the political and corporate structures to be ready. In sunny south Georgia, solar is our best bet.

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What Are Our Priorities? –Dr. Noll @ LCC 22 March 2011

Dr. Noll raised a number of issues about community priorities at the Lowndes County Commission meeting of 22 March 2011 and asked what are our priorities?

The Sierra Club letter he mentions was posted last week. For NOAA Weather Radios see previous posts. Here is the video:


Regular meeting of the Lowndes County Commission, 22 March 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Appended is the script Dr. Noll says he was reading. I’ve added a few links to relevant posts. -jsq Continue reading →

How can both Lowndes and Decatur Counties think they’re getting a private prison?

Because it’s not the same prison.

As we’ve seen, the Bainbridge-Decatur County Development Authority thinks it’s getting a private prison from CCA, and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) thinks it’s got the primary site by contract.

Carol Heard explained in The Post-Searchlight on 20 August 2010 how that could be, in Building of prison is good bet:

Jay Hollis, project manager of site acquisition for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), said the company goes to great lengths to be pre-emptive and be more competitive.

“We don’t go enter into agreements with a lot of different communities just on the outside chance that something will pop up,” Hollis said in an interview with The Post-Searchlight Wednesday. “When we go in sort of pre-emptively to get to this point, it’s because we really believe that we’re going to use that site.”

OK, that doesn’t quite explain it. But this does: Continue reading →

CCA for Lowndes County in GeorgiaTrend

Ed Lightsey writes in GeorgiaTrend for March 2011, Valdosta/Lowndes County: Taking Off about many good developments in Lowndes County. But among them is this:
About two years ago, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) began looking for sites on which to build a prison, and after an 18-month search chose Lowndes County, a decision that promises 400 to 600 new jobs. “It’s a $150-million investment,” Lofton says. “That’s the second largest investment in the history of the county. And of those promised jobs, about 120 will require post secondary education; they are nurses, physician assistants, dieticians and vocational rehab folks.”

CCA is the fifth largest penal system in the country, behind Florida, Califor-nia, Texas and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to Lofton. “They have about 20,000 employees across the country,” he says.

So why do we need them here? Continue reading →

Decatur County thinks it’s getting the CCA private prison

Jeff Findley wrote in the Post-Searchlight on 25 January 2011 about Economic activity picking up:
Engineers with Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that signed a memorandum of understanding almost a year ago with the Authority to construct and operate a prison in the industrial park, will be in Bainbridge on Feb. 18 to begin site work preparation.

Officials from Decatur County and the Development Authority with meet with CCA officials and tour the site where the prison will be located.

“They’re anxious to get it going, but very guarded on making any kind of projections about when things might start, but all indications are it would be sooner rather than later,” said McCaskill.

Initial projections have the capital investment by CCA in the neighborhood of $150 million and, when fully staffed, the facility would employ up to 600 people.

Findley wrote that Rick McCaskill is the “executive director of the Development Authority of Bainbridge and Decatur County.”

So in Decatur County CCA has gone from an announcement last July to a site visit six months later this January. According to Col. Ricketts at the 15 March 2011 VLCIA board meeting, CCA was coming to do a site visit in Lowndes County two months later on 16 March 2011. And according to Brad Lofton at that same meeting, Lowndes County is CCA’s primary site. What’s going on here (and there)?

The story continues in later posts.

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South Georgia already in drought: parameters for industry?

Droughts and floods: maybe we need to manage water better, including managing industrial use of water.

According to the AP, Ga. foresters brace for busy wildfire season:

A cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape, but in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some of the lowest points that would be expected in a century, said David Stooksbury, Georgia’s state climatologist at the University of Georgia.
The nearterm effects:
“We have a good fuel load with plenty of dry vegetation, the soil is dry and there’s a low relative humidity and there’s wind,” Stooksbury said. “That is the simple recipe for a trash fire to get out of control very quickly and become a wildfire.”
Yes, Sunday Georgia Forestry cut off burn permits in Lowndes County because some fires had gotten out of control.

The long term problem? Continue reading →

CCA private prison in Decatur County?

Brad Lofton mentioned (at the 15 March 2011 VLCIA board meeting) that the competition for VLCIA’s Project Excel, the CCA private prison, is Decatur County. Bainbridge and Decatur County seem to think they’ve been selected.

The Post-Searchlight editorialized on 16 July 2010 that the prison would be A good fit. The next day, BainbridgeGa.com posted on 17 July 2010:

Corrections Corporation of America has finally announced their intention to build a prison in Decatur County.

The not so secret secret was announced when the Bainbridge-Decatur County Development Authority agreed to a memorandum of understanding with CCA on Thursday.

The plans are to build what is thought to be in the range of a $100 million facility on 110 acres located in the Decatur County Industrial Park on Highway 27 north. The site is in the back of the Industrial Park, well back from the entrance on Highway 27 north.

It is hoped the facility will provide 400-500 jobs for our area in the next couple of years.

So how come VLCIA thinks it’s getting a private prison from CCA?

The story continues in later posts.

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