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By Robert Strenge, WSU News Service

Researchers Find Prisons Offer Few Economic Benefits to Small Towns

Throughout a boom in correctional facility construction that has spanned the past three decades, many of the nation's most depressed rural communities have vied to become a site for new prisons, expecting significant economic benefits would follow.

As the U.S. prison population grew almost 400 percent between 1980 and 1998 - to about 1.3 million inmates - it became widely accepted economic development dogma that communities that secured prison projects could expect significant economic rewards.

Although such claims met skepticism among some social scientists, there was scant evidence available to dispute them until the publication this year of the results of a research effort led by Gregory Hooks, chairman of the department of sociology at Washington State University.

Done in collaboration with WSU sociologists Clay Mosher and Thomas Rotolo and Linda Lobao, an Ohio State University sociologist and recent president of the Rural Sociological Society - the study turned up some surprising results.

"We found no evidence that prison expansion has stimulated economic growth," Hooks said of the nationwide study that assessed of the impact of both new and existing prisons over the past 25 years.

In fact, in findings that proved the most dramatic reversal of conventional wisdom on the subject, the new study concluded that becoming home to a prison facility may actually hinder economic development efforts, particularly in rural communities that are already hard-pressed.

More about Professor Gregory Hooks

Complete Story and Media Contacts

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