![]() Just about anybody could take a two-week training course and get a job that paid $11 an hour. The deal shielded the city from any direct financial risk from the prison, and in two years the 500-bed $28 million Prairie Correctional Facility was operating in a former soybean field.įor four years the prison brought prosperity to the town. In desperation, the city officials created the Appleton Economic Development Association to raise $28.5 million from 900 investors. They tried to woo a casino to build there, then a furniture factory. In 1990, the farm town of 1,500 people was facing severe economic decline. This arrangement was profitable for both the City of Hinton and Cornell Corrections for 10 more years until the prison sat vacant for four years, more recently being used to house prisoners with a different private prison company through 2020.īuilding on spec worked out less successfully for the tiny town of Appleton in western Minnesota. When demand for private prison space began to wane in 1999, Cornell Corrections deeded the prison back to the city, in exchange for a promise from the city to help Cornell Corrections bid on housing prisoners from Arizona. The city used the money to build an 18-hold golf course with lots for 100 homes at the country club, $700 thousand for a new fire station, $900 thousand to build a new high school football stadium, and $800 thousand to build a two-story terminal at the city airport. In 1998, at the height of the private prison boom, the city sold the prison for $43 million to Cornell Corrections for a $15 profit. The city spent $28 million to build its 812-bed Great Plains Correctional Facility. In 1990 city leaders in Hinton, Oklahoma won an election approving a $38 million bond issue for building a private prison and other civic improvements. ![]() But it does not require an ongoing commitment to operating the prison. Sometimes it has been a financial disaster. Sometimes this “building on spec” approach has been spectacularly profitable. Related Posts – How Do Private Prisons Make Money?īuilding prisons on spec brings in big bucks.Ī lot of the private prison industry has been organized around the principle of “If you build it, they will come.” Both small cities and large corporations have built private prisons before they had any contracts to house prisoners.Are there any drawbacks to private prisons? Are there any benefits to private prisons? Are there private prisons outside the United States? Frequently Asked Questions About Private Prisons:.Private prisons make money from prison labor.Operating revenues for private prisons vary widely from state to state.Building prisons on spec brings in big bucks.But it’s substantially over $80 billion a year, and the biggest profits aren’t even from operating the prisons. The truth is, we don’t know how much private prisons were earning before 2020, and we may not know how much private prisons are actually earning for some time. Private prisons took in about $80 billion a year before ICE started placing children in immigrant detention at a rate of up to $775 a day. But private prisons in 29 states currently hold about 7 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal inmates plus over half of the immigrant detainees. Some states like North Dakota ban the importation of prisoners from other states to keep private prisons full. Some states like California ban them altogether (although ICE still puts detainees in privately run facilities in California). Private prisons don’t operate in every state. The vast majority of inmates, about 91 percent in American prisons are in public prisons, but 9 percent of American prisoners, 180,000 people, are in for-profit incarceration facilities for crimes ranging from making threats against public officials and drug possession to grand theft auto and multiple murders. The US also has more detainees in private prisons than any other country in the world. Even though the United States has just 4 percent of the world’s population, its prisoners made up over 20 percent of that total, nearly 2.3 million American adults in jail. ![]() According to the World Prison Population List (11th edition), there were a few more than 10 million people in prisons worldwide in 2015. No other country in the world has more people in prison than in the United States. Private prisons are big business in the USA.
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