Incarceration is big business, and highly ineffective.
Excerpts
During the last two decades, the large-scale use of incarceration to solve social problems has combined with the fall-out of globalization to produce an ominous trend: prisons have become a "growth industry" in rural America.
...throughout the 1960s and 70s, an average of just four new prisons had been built in rural areas each year. During the 1980s that figure increased to an annual average of 16 and in the 1990s, it jumped to 25 new prisons annually.[3] Between 1990 and 1999, 245 prisons were built in rural and small town communities -- with a prison opening somewhere in rural America every fifteen days.
Along with gambling casinos and huge animal confinement units for raising or processing hogs and poultry, prisons have become one of the three leading rural economic enterprises as states and localities seek industries which provide large scale and quick opportunities.
"Prisons as industries do have the added plus of a captive workforce available for community projects."
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/building.htmlAs was noted in the Montana PBS documentary on the Industry there, programs are huge contributors to the failed economy. Is that why they aren't properly licensed, regulated, and investigated? Also noted in the documentary, inmates at Spring Creek Lodge do manual labor for local businesses that would otherwise be hired- working in the candle factory, bailing hay...
