{"id":1131,"date":"2012-02-03T12:47:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T17:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/vlcia-misunderstood-what-cca-was-looking-for.html"},"modified":"2012-02-03T12:47:59","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T17:47:59","slug":"vlcia-misunderstood-what-cca-was-looking-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/vlcia-misunderstood-what-cca-was-looking-for.html","title":{"rendered":"Apparently VLCIA misunderstood what CCA was looking for"},"content":{"rendered":"Apparently VLCIA, or one of its expert consultants,\nthought CCA was looking for a thriving county economy\nin choosing a private prison location.\nThat doesn’t seem to be what happened.\n

\n\nEconomic Impact of Project Excel<\/a>\nby Clifford A. Lipscomb, Ph.D., 2 November 2009:\n

\nThe VLCIA has noted that Project Excel is considering other\nlocations. Below I provide a comparison of key economic indicators for\nthese alternative counties — Grady and Decatur.\n\n
\n
\nTable 1. Characteristics of Selected Counties\n\n
\nVariable<\/th>Decatur<\/th>Grady<\/th>Lowndes\n<\/th><\/tr>\n
\nPopulation, 2008\n<\/th>\n28,823<\/td>25,115<\/td>104,583\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
\n% Pop w\/ Bachelor’s degree\n<\/th>\n12.1%<\/td>10.6%<\/td>19.7%\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
\nMedian HH Income, 2007\n<\/th>\n32,650<\/td>33,060<\/td>38,666\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
\nPersons below poverty, 2007\n<\/th>\n22.5%<\/td>22.2%<\/td>20.5%\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
\nPersons white non-Hispanic, 2008\n<\/th>\n54.8%<\/td>60.6%<\/td>60.0%\n<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/table>\nIn closing, it appears that Project Excel is an excellent candidate for\nlocation in Lowndes County.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo which other county did CCA actually pick?\n\n\n\nDecatur County<\/a>, with low population, low income, and high poverty.\nAccording to BainbridgeGa.com, 17 July 2010,\n\nPrison Coming to Decatur County,<\/a>\n
\nCorrections Corporation of America has finally announced their intention to build a prison in Decatur County.\n\n<\/a>\n

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

\nThe 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.\n

\nIt is hoped the facility will provide 400-500 jobs for our area in the next couple of years.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s been a year and a half since then, and those jobs haven’t materialized, not in Decatur County, and not in Lowndes County.\n

\nSo why would we want a private prison to turn us into a prison colony\nwhile generating profits for its executives and shareholders?\nAccording to VLCIA’s consultant:\n

\nIn tough economic times, counties and cities must be willing to be\ncreative in their business attraction efforts. Project Excel is not a\ntypical project (lean manufacturing, logistics\/distribution, etc.) for our\ncommunity; but the current state of the economy is not typical, either.\n<\/blockquote>\nBecause we’re desperate, apparently.\nAnd apparently desperate was as good as impoverished for CCA.\n

\nAre we really that desperate?\nThat’s what they said in\n\nGrayson County, Virginia<\/a> about the prison\nthey ended up building that never opened:\n

\n“We really need it in the county really bad.”\n<\/blockquote>\nDo we want to invest in a business that’s likely\n\nto close<\/a>\nor\n\nnever open,<\/a>\nbecause we can no longer afford to lock up so many people?\nIf either happens, we the taxpayers are out a lot of money\nfor zero economic benefits.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIf you want to help provide the Authority with evidence of\n\ncommunity opposition<\/a>,\nhere’s a\n\npetition to stop the CCA private prison.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apparently VLCIA, or one of its expert consultants, thought CCA was looking for a thriving county economy in choosing a private prison location. That doesn’t seem to be what happened. Economic Impact of Project Excel by Clifford A. Lipscomb, Ph.D., 2 November 2009: The VLCIA has noted that Project Excel is considering other locations. Below […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,40,14,15,2,72,178],"tags":[8817,8717,3108,2993,2858,1114,409,8730,1622,8710,730,3109,75,1297,3110,8700,180,8749],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-government","category-incarceration","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-community","tag-confidentiality-agreement","tag-contract","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-decatur-county","tag-extension","tag-incarceration","tag-land","tag-law","tag-open-records","tag-option","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-purchase","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-if","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}