The U.S. Department of Agriculture is quietly funding a rural jail-building boom. "Over the last two decades, the USDA has been funding jail construction through a program designed to finance infrastructure like emergency services, hospitals, fire stations, and community centers in agricultural areas," Jack Norton and Jacob Kang-Brown report for the Vera Institute of Justice. "But these funds are now increasingly being directed to helping some rural counties build new, expanded jails, and helping others stay in the business of immigrant detention.
When President Trump announced this summer that farmers hurt by the trade war would receive up to $12 billion at harvest, the administration also increased USDA funding for jail construction. Such funding has been justified as important to rural development since the Nixon Administration authorized the Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program in the Rural Development Act of 1972. But the USDA didn't fund the first jail through that program until it supplied $2.2 million to the Hale County jail in Greensboro, Alabama; since then the agency has funded more than $360 million for rural jail construction, Norton and Kang-Brown report.
"That funding has picked up speed since 2015. And, while total overall spending for the Community Facilities program has fallen by one-third since a peak in 2010, total funding allocated for jails has increased by more than 200 percent since 2010," Norton and Kang-Brown report. "In 2014, the USDA allocated almost no funding for jails, but in fiscal year 2017, it provided $31.5 million in direct loans at very low interest rates for four jail projects in rural communities. In fiscal year 2018, it plans to spend $75 million, more than double the previous year, on jails in Greene and Baker Counties."
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2SdiRI4 Agriculture Dept. program funds rural jail-building boom - Entrepreneur Generations
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