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How Cameron County's entrepreneurial jail scheme costs taxpayers

I've written before about the folly of counties building extra jail space in hopes of engaging in entrepreneurial incarceration, either taking in federal prisoners or inmates from other counties. The blog Texas Prison Bidness points out a terrific example out of Cameron County at the state's southeastern tip of how that strategy can backfire. The Cameron Sheriff has begun to ship local, pretrial inmates three hours north to Nueces County in order to honor federal detention contracts which were originally pitched as profit centers but now are proving problematic.Cameron County Commissioners thought they were being clever when they overbuilt their jail in order to lease the extra space to the feds, but it turns out they've outsmarted themselves...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 01, 2009 (boomark / email).