What comes first? Prisoners or New Prisons?

[Mastrmynd]

Are new prisons being built to deal with overcrowding or are they being built in hopes of one day filling each cell?
hmmm?

i mean... are prisons big business now? Do we really need SOO many prisons nowadays?

[Sam Wilson]

Are new prisons being built to deal with overcrowding or are they being built in hopes of one day filling each cell?
hmmm?

i mean... are prisons big business now? Do we really need SOO many prisons nowadays?

a lot of prisons these days are being subcontracted to independant corporations, much like the military contracting out to groups like blackwater, so hell yes they are big business.  As far as new ones being built, not as often as one would think, overcrouding is rampant in the prison system. 

[Reginald Hudlin]

It's called the "prison/industrial complex"...I've also heard it referred to as today's WPA program for rural whites.  Build a prison in a depressed white community (which provides construction and other support jobs) and fill it up with black folks from the city. 

I'm no expert on the subject but there are folks who are on it.

[Tanksleyd]

The incarceration rate took a BIG jump under Bill Clinton.