The poor state of Mississippi is in dire straights. There isn’t enough money in state or local coffers to pay for even basic services.
Want to know why? Because the local jailers don’t have enough prisoners anymore! How sad.
The Huffington Post reports that back in the 1990’s the state of Mississippi had more prisoners than it could handle. Conservative government leaders at the time had passed several laws increasing mandatory jail time for even minor drug offenses. They claimed that the laws were intended to cut down on crime, but it seems clear that they were also passed to make money.
There were so many prisoners in state facilities that the state offered a deal to local counties. You build the prisons, we’ll keep them filled. The state paid for each inmate, and the counties had a bunch of new jobs. To make things even sweeter, the inmates could be made to work at jobs like lawn maintenance and garbage collecting at no cost. The obvious benefit came in terms of money again: state and local governments could cut spending on those things. It was great for a while.
You can see where this is going, right?
The entire system depends on a steady stream of inmates to keep the jails full. If the jails run low on warm bodies, the money goes with them.
Recently the number of inmates in both state and local jails has dropped. The state is now taking back many of the prisoners that it had sent to the locals, hoping to save money. This means that the local communities are losing both income and jobs.
So where have all the inmates gone?
First off, new federal laws have reduced mandatory sentencing for low-level drug crimes. This is probably a good thing, given that there has been a long history of unfairness and discrimination in sentencing between black and white offenders.
But the second problem is this: It seems that a lot of the prisoners who used to be sent to the local jails at a cost of $43 a day are now ending up in private prisons at a cost of up to $80 a day. You have to wonder why.
County official Scott Strickland put it this way:
“I think its political favors going around, the reason they’re doing that, but that’s neither here nor there.”
All Strickland knows is that if the counties are going to get back on their feet, they need those prisoners back right quick. It’s never okay when a county’s financial well-being is linked to the number of people (of color) it locks up.
Featured image by Oh-Berlin.com, available through a Creative Commons License 2.0.
