Sound Advice

Globe, Arizona seems to have fallen under the spell of James Parkey, robber baron / frontman of Corplan Corrections, who, along with representatives from Cuny Corporation and Emerald Correctional Management, was able to convince council members to approve a bid to build a new private prison.  Corplan, Emerald, and Cuny have a long history of building private prisons in desperate small towns on speculation, with grandiose promises of swarms of inmates that will provide much-needed revenue for counties hurting economically.  However, in a lot of instances counties are not able to get contracts to house inmates in the facilities for a variety of reasons, and a bunch of small towns have lost considerable sums of money by defaulting on bond sales they used to finance the prison.  As the mayor of Hardin, Montana warns, any small town looking to do business with Corplan/Emerald should "do a lot of research."  Hopefully though that research won't include looking at the economic feasibility studies conducted in conjunction with the bids, as the consultant who does them (Howard Geisler) has been working with Emerald for years on projects all across the country, and has included some major inaccuracies and assumptions in his reports.