{"id":2252,"date":"2011-03-30T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/private-prisons-failing-in-texas-leaving-locals-in-lurch.html"},"modified":"2011-03-30T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T12:00:00","slug":"private-prisons-failing-in-texas-leaving-locals-in-lurch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/private-prisons-failing-in-texas-leaving-locals-in-lurch.html","title":{"rendered":"Private Prisons failing in Texas, leaving locals in lurch"},"content":{"rendered":"John Burnett writes for NPR that\n\nPrivate Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble<\/a>:\n
\n\n<\/a>\nIt seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming\ntown of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton\nDetention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless\nsteel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide\njobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.\n

\nFor eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid\nfor prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out\nall of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There\nwas also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.\n

\nShortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that\nit was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility\nhas been empty ever since.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe pullquote:\n\n\n

\nAccording to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional\npopulation in the United States is declining for the first time in\nthree decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing\nalternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere\nare slashing budgets.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s right: the crime rate is falling, despite what\nif-it-bleeds-it-leads TV tells you.\nAnd Texas discovered several years ago it couldn’t afford\nto keep locking up more people.\nGeorgia can’t afford it either, while it’s slashing education budgets.\n

\n

\nCorrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison\noperator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong, particularly\nfor federal immigration detainees.\n<\/blockquote>\nOf course CCA would say that!\nThey’re busy\nlobbying for more anti-immigration laws<\/a>\nso they can drum up more private prison inmates, paid for with our tax dollars.\n

\nLet’s not let Lowndes County be a sucker for this failed industry.\n

\n-jsq\n

\nPS: Thanks to Dr. Dennis Marks for the tip.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Burnett writes for NPR that Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble: It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[1113,14,2,72,178],"tags":[1124,4814,381,4812,8817,2858,1298,8704,8705,8701,8830,8730,4813,7,75,2552,1297,237,180,8749],"class_list":["post-2252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cca","category-economy","category-government","category-incarceration","category-vlcia","tag-arizona","tag-bill-clayton-detention-center","tag-budget","tag-bureau-of-justice-statistics","tag-cca","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-crime","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-immigration","tag-incarceration","tag-littlefield","tag-lowndes-county","tag-prison","tag-prisoners","tag-private-prison","tag-texas","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Ak","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252","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=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}