Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Boom And Bust: How Private Detention Centers Wreak Economic Havoc On The Counties That Turn To Them For Stability, Max W. Parrott, Reynaldo Leanos Jr.

Capstones

In 2015, a riot broke out at a federal prison in a small Texas town not far from the U.S.-Mexico border. Prisoners tore through the kevlar tents of their dorms and a fire broke out, rendering the private prison uninhabitable. The facility was an economic engine for the impoverished, Rio Grande Valley county, so when the facility closed, it left the county $2 million short of its estimated budget, with $78 million in unpaid bonds and 400 fewer jobs for a population of about 21,000 people. This summer, three years after experiencing near economic collapse, Willacy County rushed back into …