Prisons

Author: Michael Redmond Edited by: Nora Lewis

Suggested Citation:

Redmond, M., Lewis, N. (2026). Prisons. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/prisons

Prisons

Key Takeaways

• Local workforces may struggle to access the necessary training for new industries in their community, and even if they are able to access specialized training, they may be forced to leave their communities to do so, limiting local economic and employment benefits.
• New infrastructure projects (such as prisons or advanced nuclear plants) may not bring "spin-off" industries or substantial economic activity to a region despite developer promises, particularly when specialized workforces linked to such infrastructure tend to live outside host communities.

Overview on Prisons as an "Engine of Economic Growth"

Prisons are often sold as a financial engine for economically maligned rural communities, however the evidence of benefits is mixed. The U.S. "prison boom" that began in the 1980s roughly coincided with the farm crisis: high interest rates and record foreclosures threw rural communities into crisis, and prisons were pitched as an economic solution that could bring new, good-paying jobs to these areas. Towns that got prisons early on experienced some economic benefits, including increases in home values and median income, which may have blunted the impacts of the farm crisis in some of these communities. However, these effects decreased significantly over time, with prisons constructed after 1990 having low or even negative effects on local job growth and home values.

Prisons seldom contribute to economic growth for several reasons. Most new prison job opportunities are taken by veteran corrections officers from older facilities. In California, only 20% of new prison jobs were filled by locals, and in Missouri it was less than one third. In Letcher County, KY, an Environmental Impact Report prepared by the EPA evaluating a potential new prison estimated that as many as 100% of new jobs created would be taken by non-county residents.

Corrections officers getting jobs at new prisons often do not relocate to the community. Employees at California prisons commute nearly twice as far to work compared to the state average, and those that do move to prison towns rarely put down roots. New prisons do not necessarily lead to the establishment of other businesses nearby and rarely generate other links to and within local economies. Local residents often lack the skills and union connections required to secure jobs in prison construction, construction is often undertaken by non-local firms, and small towns competing to attract prisons often make exceptions for local construction laws or requirements.

Crisis, Institutional Structure, and California's Post-Keynesian Prison Constructionism

Prisons are born of socio-economic crises. Beyond just real or manufactured "crime problems," prisons are a product of capital crises, which in turn are driven by certain types of capital surpluses. Abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that in political economy, "surplus and crisis derive from a single, extremely complicated, relationship." In response to crises (including overaccumulation and capital surplus), governments often act as "collective capital," intervening to return markets to their expansive momentum. Furthermore, crisis-driven government intervention generally requires and relies on the restructuring of existing institutions, rather than manufacturing entirely new social, economic, and political relationships.

The relationships between crisis, surplus, and institutions are essential to understanding California's relentless prison constructionism between 1980 and 2010. In the 1970s, successive political and economic crises in California resulted in surpluses of finance capital, land, labor, and state capacity. With a mandate to reduce both crime and public spending while simultaneously growing the economy, these surpluses were deliberately (but not conspiratorially) directed by a newly elected state government with strong post-Keynesian ideologies into "the largest prison building program in the history of the world." Other institutions, including the police and judiciary, reprised their roles to fit this new arrangement, and between 1982 and 2000 the state's prison population increased more than 500 percent despite sustained declines in overall crime rates (which fell more than 25 percent over the same period). Furthermore, in her seminal book Golden Gulag, Gilmore argues that this regime of prison construction was not the inevitable outcome of California's economic and bureaucratic surpluses, and that "the new state built itself in part by building prisons."

Surpluses in finance capital are high, and recent financial crises have investors looking for guaranteed returns. California financed its prison expansion through public-private partnerships driven by public debt, which is seen as one of the safest forms of capital investment. The U.S. has always had a land surplus, and recent weather-related disasters (drought, storms, etc.) threaten to further devalue land (especially in rural and low-income communities) around the country. Similar drivers led to the California land crises of the 1970s. Additionally, while national unemployment remains low, joblessness in rural communities (where prisons are likely to be sited) is high. All of these factors, and the fact that prisons have antecedent, well-established institutional structures on which to expand, have long been used for state-building and social construction.

Real Risks are Hidden or Dismissed

The dominant public perception of risks associated with prisons is sometimes unrelated to the operational or more tangible realities of the technology, which allows for easy dismissal of those fears and subversion of the public interest. Studies have shown that the primary reason communities are hesitant to host a prison is fear of escaped convicts. While stories featuring "dangerous" escaped convicts are often widely publicized, incidents of violent felons escaping maximum security prisons are exceedingly rare, and most prison breaks involve low-security prisoners who venture off-site and are almost immediately returned to the facility without incident. The persistence of these fears in the public psyche influences how prisons are discussed, with local officials attempting to sell residents on siting a prison in their town often emphasizing safety and the low probability of escape.

This disconnect is an issue, as infrastructure such as prisons carries substantial risks that are rendered invisible by dominant narratives. While prisons may create jobs, all jobs are not equal, and the ones created by prisons are often incredibly stressful, dangerous, and traumatic. Understaffing and lack of required training or qualifications for new employees, combined with the nature of prison work, has resulted in a profession plagued by high rates of depression, suicide, and PTSD. This can place a burden on communities that house these workers, as they are often ill-equipped to manage the elevated mental and physical health needs of impacted residents. Ultimately, the types of jobs and opportunities created by prisons tend not to facilitate the happy, healthy, cohesive communities that society should strive for.

Obviously, the choice of whether or not to host a prison should be left to communities themselves, but weighing tradeoffs in terms of "safety" instead of other holistic tradeoffs such as job availability and quality ultimately benefits the prison industrial complex. The discourse around prison construction suggests that if decisions are framed purely in terms of promised job opportunities and safety, towns will eagerly hitch their fates to deeply problematic technologies that may ultimately hurt them in the long run.

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

Advanced reactor technology and prisons (defined broadly as a technology encompassing the physical spaces, as well as the institutional and social arrangements that form the "prison industrial complex") are both designed as solutions to socio-economic problems, rely on existing institutional arrangements, and are built by governments seeking to alleviate crises by mobilizing capital markets. Advanced reactors are similarly pitched as economic lifelines for maligned rural and industrial communities, often with little to no evaluation of the true benefits communities would receive. The history of prison construction in the US suggests that while some early adopters (like coal communities) could see the economic blow of their declining industry brunted, deployment at the scale necessary for advanced reactors to rapidly decline in cost and offset significant amounts of CO2 would require many communities to accept long-term economic stagnation or even decline. Furthermore, the fundamental nature of these communities would be forever altered in ways that fall below a county assessor's bottom line. Both prisons and advanced reactors require communities to accept the maxim that all investment is good investment, and that all jobs are good jobs, when in fact it's the types of jobs and investments that determine the nature of a place and the futures of its people. In addition, both technologies deal with public perceptions of risk, interconnected systems of oppression, and the tension between reform and radical change.

Key References

Besser, T. & Hansen, M. (n.d.). The development of last resort: The impact of new state prisons on small town economies. Journal of the Community Development Society.

Eason, J. (2019, November 22). Understanding the effects of the U.S. prison boom on rural communities. Institute for Research on Poverty.

Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California (1st ed.). University of California Press.

References

Besser, T. & Hansen, M. (n.d.). The development of last resort: The impact of new state prisons on small town economies. Journal of the Community Development Society.

Brennan Center for Justice. (2015, February 12). California: Increased incarceration had limited effect on reducing crime for over two decades.

Clement, J. (2002, January 1). Big house on the prairie. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Eason, J. (2019, November 22). Understanding the effects of the U.S. prison boom on rural communities. Institute for Research on Poverty.

Environmental Defense Fund. (2023, February 16). US housing market overvalued by $200 billion due to unpriced climate risks.

Federal Bureau of Prisons. (2015). Final environmental impact statement for proposed United States Penitentiary and Federal Prison Camp. U.S. Department of Justice.

Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California (1st ed.). University of California Press.

Hanson, T. (2023, September 18). Prison escapes in America: How common are they and what's the real risk? CBS News.

Hooks, G., Mosher, C., Genter, S., Rotolo, T. & Lobao, L. (2010). Revisiting the impact of prison building on job growth: Education, incarceration, and county-level employment, 1976–2004. Social Science Quarterly, 91(1), 228–244.

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Piketty, T. (2020, March 10). Capital and ideology. Belknap Press.

Prison Policy Initiative. (2022, May 9). Working in 'a meat grinder:' A research roundup showing prison and jail jobs aren't all that states promise they will be.

Reisner, M. (1986). Cadillac Desert: The American West and its disappearing water (Revised edition). Penguin Random House.

Rudman, C. J. & Berthelsen, J. (1991). An analysis of the California Department of Corrections' planning process: Strategies to reduce the cost of incarcerating state prisoners. California State Assembly Office of Research.

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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Local Area Unemployment Statistics.

Photo: North Cell Block, Philadelphia County Prison (Moyamensing Prison) in Philadelphia, PA. Jack E. Boucher / Public Domain, U.S. Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.