Prisons Don’t Fix Rural Poverty—They Make It Worse
In a report published on August 27, 2024, the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, Senior Editor Brian Nam-Sonenstein and University of Minnesota Researcher Eric Seligman tackled one of the primary arguments used by politicians over the past 30 years to locate new state prisons in rural areas. The promise was that these facilities would serve as engines to revive flagging local economies, primarily by employing a sizable workforce with stable, middle-class incomes.
As the authors note, towns that suffer from “unemployment and deindustrialization, especially rural communities, are often sold the idea that prisons can help turn things around.” But their research shows that the opposite happens—that “prisons actually deepen poverty in the communities where they are built.” Moreover, the worse the poverty is in a town before a prison arrives, the deeper its economic decline afterward.
That’s because the jobs that prisons create are often filled not by locals but by senior staff from the prison system, who transfer from other lockups outside the area. Why? Locals are generally less qualified candidates, thanks to what the researchers call “symptoms of local poverty,” including “bad credit histories,” low education levels, a higher likelihood of criminal records and drug use, as well as a dearth of younger workers—most of whom also lack prior experience. All of that disadvantages local workers in the hiring process at a new prison.
When California built a new state prison in Corcoran in 1988, less than 10 percent of the slots were filled by local residents. In New York, the state promised 750 new jobs would accompany a new prison when it opened in Malone in 1999. Yet hiring protocols meant that most of the new jobs went to those with seniority already working for the state prison system, who then moved from outside of town. At a federal Bureau of Prisons lockup opened in Kentucky’s McCreary County in 2003, just 10 percent of the new hires were locals—accounting for a total of 30 jobs.
Using prisons in pursuit of investment in a rural community is “often a race to the bottom,” the researchers declared. That’s because a new prison can actually discourage investment by other businesses, which are fearful of a criminal population so close to their workers’ homes. When communities also chase new prison construction with discounted land, resources and tax rates, what often follows is a decline in land values and local rents.
Large chain retailers also move in to service the new workers at the prison—and the new visitors to the prisoners held there—driving out smaller local retailers. Prices increase for remaining residents, even as the money they spend no longer circulates in the community but is shipped out to the chains’ headquarters.
Prisons come with a steep environmental cost too, destroying local wildlife habitats or exposing prisoners and workers to dangerously polluted sites. They also generate enormous quantities of sewage and garbage that small communities lack resources to process. See: 10 Ways That Mass Incarceration Is an Engine of Economic Injustice, PPI (Aug. 2024).
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