New Research and Papers

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The Real Cost of Building and Financing Prisons and Jails

An American Seduction: Portrait of a Prison Town
By Joelle Fraser
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/TTT_paper2.pdf

Building a Prison Economy in Rural America
By Tracy Huling. From Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, Editors. The New Press. 2002.
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/building.html

The Business of Punishing: Imediments to Accountability in the Private Corrections Industry
By Stephen Raher. Historical overview of prison privatization, its growth and legal issues concerning privatization including a focus on immigrant detention. Richmond Journal of Law and Public Interest. Winter 2010. Available online (as part of the full issue)
http://rjolpi.richmond.edu/archive/Volume_XIII_Issue_2.pdf

Catholic Bishops of the South: Wardens from Wall Street: Prison Privatization
Part of a series of pastoral statements by Catholic Bishops of the South on the Criminal Justice process.
http://www.catholiclabor.org/church-doc/CBS-2.htm

The Development of Last Resort: The Impact of New State Prisons on Small Town Economies
By Terry L. Besser and Margaret M. Hanson
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/TTT_paper1.pdf

Don't Build It Here Revisited (or "There is no Economic Salvation Through Incarceration") - Prisons Do Not Create Jobs
By Clayton Mosher and Gregory Hooks. Published in Prison Legal News, January 2010.
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/dont_build_it_here.pdf

The Economic Impacts of the Prison Development Boom on Persistently Poor Rural Places
By T.L. Farrigan and A.K. Glasmeier.
http://www.onenation.psu.edu/produc..._development/prison_development.pdf

Fact Sheet on the Use of Lease Revenue Bonds to Build Prisons
By Californians United for a Responsible Budget.
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/Fact_Sheet_Lease_Rev_Bonds.pdf

Impacts of Jail Expansion in New York State: A Hidden Burden
By Dana Kaplan, Center for Constitutional Rights. May 2007. An excellent, comprehensive report on what is driving the building of jails in NYS includes important race-based analysis and recommendations to alternatives to jail building includes findings that that:

• Between 1999 and 2006, the New York state prison population had dropped from 71,000 to 62,928 people, a decrease of 8 percent in less than a decade. Despite the decrease in the prison population, the combined capacity of jails in upstate and suburban New York increased by 20.
• Jail construction has cost counties an estimated $1 billion, raising local property taxes in some instances as much as 40 percent and diverting money away from social services.
• The growth in the number of people incarcerated in jails has not been caused by an increase in crime or by an increase in population-rather, it has been caused by the expansion mandates issued by the SCOC and new arrest and detention policies, including arrest policies for low-level offenses and misdemeanors; a rising number of mentally ill people in jail; system inefficiencies; and the use of local jails to hold those detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Jail Leaders Speak: Current & Future Challenges to Jail Administration and Operations
A Summary Report To The Bureau of Justice Assistance July 27, 2007 The Center for Innovative Public Policies, Inc. A few excerpts:

• "we have to stop looking at ourselves as just jailers, and look at ourselves as part of a social service provider system...let's embrace this problem, fight for the funding, and just do it"
• "participants suggested that jails need to explore nothing less than a fundamental mission change that expands their official role beyond just traditional incarceration functions toward becoming an acknowledged medical/mental health service provider for an un-served segment of the local population"
• "this will require the type of public attitude change and widespread commitment with funding, that can only be accomplished with a national initiative"
• "with regard to re-entry endeavors, a similar theme was observed in terms of expanding the traditionally recognized boundaries of the jail to encompass the transitional services that have heretofore remained relatively exclusively within the realm of state corrections systems"
• "again, jail representatives are looking not only to officially acknowledge and bring into the operational mainstream a role that has long been neglected, but also to employ it to enhance their value-added position in the community"

Prisons as Rural Development
Deborah M. Tootle
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/Prisons_as_Rural_Development.pdf

Professors and Prison Guards: An Overview of California’s State Workforce
California Budget Project. April 2010. Some departments have shrunk these past two decades (most notably, the Department of Food and Agriculture declined 17 percent in payroll over that period). But one department has ballooned. The total state prison corrections budget has literally doubled over those same two decades; the system has grown at four times the rate of the rest of state employment. Ultimately, the report makes a good case that (a) the prison system is a runaway train for state spending, and (b) that California is not going to be able to drastically reduce state employment without having a major impact on direct services to residents.
http://www.cbp.org/pdfs/2010/1004_bbg_Professors_and_Prison_Guards.pdf

Texas Prison Bid'ness: An Interactive Map of Texas' Private Prisons
Texas is home to more than 70 private prisons, jails, and detention centers. The map gives readers a chance to see which private prison corporations operate the most prisons in Texas. The map also includes contact information for each facility, and the "facility pages"and "company pages" will track upcoming posts related to scandals and news involving specific private prison companies and their facilities.
http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/map

Why Not in Our County? Cost-Effective Solutions to Jail Overcrowding (2004)
Factsheet. Compiled by Dana Kaplan, consultant, National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities.
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/jail_reform_natl.pdf