Reply #12: Have the facilities long since been set up?

[Karenina]

Yes!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1446190#1446457

Empty Promises
Missouri has been pouring millions into prisons that aren't being used. But stay tuned: If politicians have their way, there will be plenty of inmates to go around.
BY BRUCE RUSHTON

Locals say the lights always burn at Missouri's largest prison, a sprawling 210-acre complex on the outskirts of Bonne Terre. Scores of orange bulbs, mounted on tall poles, fire up the winter sky and can be seen for miles.
With enough power to turn night into day, the lights make the new Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Center as obvious a landmark as the towering 32-acre mound of lead-mine tailings left behind by the St. Joe lead company. The 2 million-ton dirt heap and a huge underground cavity are the old lead company's legacy to Bonne Terre. Today the abandoned mine, dubbed Billion Gallon Lake, is the world's largest freshwater diving resort, attracting notice from scuba magazines and National Geographic.

<HUGE snip>

The acting superintendent of the empty prison doesn't know what will happen. Maybe Missouri, like other states, will be closing prisons within the next few years. Then again, inmate numbers could keep rising -- maybe the state will have to choose between building even more prisons or returning to the days when prisoners were shoehorned into every available cranny. Or lawmakers could reform sentencing laws and guarantee a reduction in inmates.

"I don't have to make those decisions," Jim Purkett says.

He looks relieved.



riverfronttimes.com | originally published: February 20, 2002