Today on Radio-Gram we are devoting the entire show to the economies of incarceration. The number of people incarcerated in the state of Kentucky has increased by approximately 750% since 1974, growing from 3,000 to 22,500 inmates. As shocking as these numbers are, they reflect a nationwide phenomenon. The United States today has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with approximately 1 and one quarter million people behind bars today. Such staggering statistics have created what is often referred to as “the prison development boom.” Since the 1980s, as skyrocketing rates of incarceration have continued to fuel the demand for prison construction, it has become widely accepted knowledge that building prisons in economically depressed regions will help promote broad-scale economic growth. Many of these new prison sites are in rural communities.
According to the work of Calvin Beale, a demographer for the United States Department of Agriculture, between 1980 and 1991, 213 prisons were built in rural regions. Between 1992-1994, 83 more prisons were built nation-wide in rural areas. Since 1980, over 350 rural counties have constructed prisons. Many of the rural regions that have faced the most rapid increases in prison construction are also the most economically struggling communities in the country. Approximately one quarter of all rural prison construction nation-wide has been concentrated in four regions: The West Texas Plains, the Mississippi delta, south central Georgia, and here in the southern coalfield region of Appalachia.

WMMT is based in the coalfields of central Appalachia, a region that is facing huge economic challenges as we look toward a future where coal wont be the dominant economic force that it has been over the last 100 years. One of the things being promoted as a solution is to build more prisons in the coalfields.

This Radio-gram was produced by Sylvia Ryerson and Mia Frederick. Tune in next week for part 2.

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