Georgia press complicit in promoting private prisons

The Augusta Chronicle puts it in the lede for the whole state, Georgia showing signs of recovery: Tax numbers give reasons for hope, Associated Press, Monday, March 14, 2011:

Hotels are hiring desk clerks and housekeepers in anticipation of a spring tourist boom in Savannah, while even a rural Georgia city devastated by manufacturing losses is putting some people back to work as construction begins on a $57 million private prison.

Where is that?

However, King Rocker, the mayor of tiny Millen, is seeing sales perk up for the first time in three years at his building supplies store in Jenkins County. Business had withered by about 65 percent, he said, until Corrections Corporation of American broke ground on a prison designed to hold 1,150 inmates.

The prison's owner estimates it will employ about 200 workers full time, many of them local hires. The company will also have to pay taxes on the prison's 107 acres in the county, and its electric and water bills are expected to bring in substantial cash.

Yeah, that's what the tiny Texas town of Littlefield, thought, too, until its private prison closed up shop, leaving locals in the lurch. Meanwhile our tax money goes to CCA, and some small fraction of it trickles into Millen. It would be more efficient to just give Millen that fraction as stimulus and cut out the CCA middleman. Hey, how about fund an ex-prisoner rehabilitation center in Millen instead?

Why does Georgia keep falling for industries that already failed in other states? Well, we know why. Stay tuned.

-jsq