Folkston, Georgia is just across the state line from the Jacksonville, Florida area.
It has only 3 things going for it and soon will have only 2 things.
Swamp tourism.
Foamer tourism.
A private prison which constitutes both the main employer and main user of utilities.
GEO Group is the owner and operator of the facility, which currently handles detained immigrants. It will close in September after the Bureau of Prisons declined to renew its contract.
While it sucks for Folkston, it still is a move in the right direction when a private prison closes.
And if Biden wins, it is very likely that the private prison industry will be wiped out at the Federal level very quickly. Closures of private prisons had begun under Obama, but Trump reversed that policy when he took office. Reversing it again may very well be a Day 1 action under Biden.
I figure most of the displaced people from Folkston will end up migrating down to Jacksonville.
That actually wouldn’t be out of the question. The facility was built in 1998 and appears to be up to BoP standards. If GEO Group is willing to sell the facility outright to the Bureau of Prisons, I would have no issue with the facility reopening as a BoP facility, fully run by the government.
I lived not too far from the epicenter of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania. Two Luzerne County judges were taking kickbacks from private prisons to funnel juveniles to their facilities with enhanced terms. Other such scandals have occurred. I was never a fan of private before then and that scandal pushed me firmly into the abolition group.
The other issue is that to maximize profit, private prisons skimp on security, medical and other areas. Accordingly, private prisons are notoriously more dangerous than public prisons.
But again, I would have no problem with the government buying this facility and turning it into a public BoP facility.
Since the era of private prisons is rapidly coming to an end it has pretty well zero commercial value as it would cost more to transform it into anything other than a prison than it would to build new facilities.
Hence, the BOP or state should be able to pick it up for next to nothing while ensuring they don’t kill the economy of the surrounding towns.