KENEDY, Texas -- On a mud-caked plateau that once nurtured grazing cattle rises the symbol of a new economic boom.
Four cranes swing in the hot spring breeze. Three hundred workers shape identical three-story buildings made of concrete and steel.
In this tiny town once known as Six Shooter Junction they are preparing to welcome more than 2,800 new residents within 15 months.
They are a building a prison.
And they are not alone.
Fueled by crime, fear and tough sentencing legislation, America is on a prison construction binge. And there is no end in sight for this boom, which is reverberating in the country with the world's highest incarceration rate.
"We are addressing our criminal justice problem through heavy construction. And we are not going to build ourselves out of the problem," said James A. "Andy" Collins, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
But try, America will.
Like a chess game, each move of public policy meant to quell crime has consequences in the prison business. Life sentences for three-time felony offenders, 100,000 added police on the streets and court orders to ease prison overcrowding lead to a push for added space -- and facilities.
As of Jan. 1, 1993, there were 79,283 prison beds under construction in America, enough for every man, woman and child living in Annapolis, Cumberland and College Park.
And the cost? According to the 1993 Corrections Yearbook, 74 new prison projects in 20 jurisdictions and 80 additions to existing facilities in 27 jurisdictions carry a $2.2 billion price tag, enough money to erect 20 identical Oriole Park at Camden Yards baseballcomplexes.
From Maryland to California, new prisons and expensive
additions continue to fill the landscape. But it is in Texas where the boom is loudest.
Texas will double its prison capacity to 145,000 beds by August 1995. In all, the state is building 47 prison units from scratch and adding space to 31 existing facilities at a price tag of $1.3 billion, or what it cost to build and launch the original Hubble Space Telescope.
By the turn of the century, Texas could top 200,000 beds, vying with California for the title of largest prison system in the country.
"I don't think it's something you want to advertise as an attribute of the state," Mr. Collins said.
But old rail towns like Kenedy, where the last picture show played years ago and the trains hardly come anymore, are lining up to cash in.
Prisons don't just bring inmates, they bring jobs and economic growth.
"The price of oil may plummet and the Japanese may challenge a local industry," said H. B. "Trip" Ruckman III, a local bank president. "But unless there is an outbreak of morality, you'll have this business for 100 years -- unfortunately."
During the 1980s, America's prison population nearly tripled, from 315,974 to more than 925,000. So began the building boom, with 70 percent of prison space now in use built since 1985 at a cost of $32.9 billion. More is to come.
To grasp the magnitude of America's prison building campaign, though, it's best to come to one place.
In Texas, south of San Antonio, is a concrete and steel patch as rich as the uranium once mined from the land. From the old Navy town of Beeville to Kenedy they are building a prison empire of 9,600 beds.
The way John Griffin figures it, Texas needs more prisons.
But it all comes at a price, and he should know, having lived the past 20 years in five penal institutions around the state while serving a life sentence for two murders.
"This is a neat solution to crime, I guess," he said. "Build a bunch of penitentiaries and sweep 'em in."
Griffin has lived three to a cell in tiny quarters meant for two, lived in prisons built during the last century, and lived through small riots that rarely raised a ripple of interest outside the prison walls.
Now, he is an inmate in what passes for prison paradise in Texas, the 2,250-bed, maximum-security McConnell Unit in Beeville, a dusty old Navy town that once produced fighter pilots but which is now on a fast track to a new reputation: prison capital of South Texas.
He is studying toward a doctorate in sociology and, almost like a state legislator, Griffin is well versed in the facts and figures of the Texas prison system. He can calculate the economic effects of what it costs and what it means for a state to devote so much money to prison construction.
Texas has to build prisons quickly to relieve a backlog of 30,000 inmates convicted of crimes and awaiting space in the state facilities.
"It's frightening, and it should be frightening to people out there," Griffin said. "What is the growth industry of this state? It's prisons."
Beeville's boom
Just look at Beeville, once home to a naval air base at Chase Field and a favored dove-hunting ground of former President George Bush.
The base shut down two years ago, but the town of 13,000 is
humming right along.
They've got a new major employer around here: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The McConnell Unit where Griffin is held employs more than 800 workers, many of whom live in the surrounding community.
The old Chase Field base is also being converted into a prison compound, with a pair of 2,000-bed prison dormitories rising like giant warehouses on what was once a golf course. Nearly every building on the base is being used for something related to corrections. Except the old Navy brig.
"It would be inhuman to put someone in there," said James Zeller, the warden.
On the other side of Beeville is the McConnell Unit, the place Griffin now calls home. It looks nothing like prison as envisioned in the movies. McConnell resembles a community college campus, but it is surrounded by fencing, three rows of razor wire and three guard towers.
There no longer are rows of cells. Now, prisoners are housed in what are called pods, smaller units, containing 48 men, housed two to a cell along three decks.
Guards and inmates also interact, sharing the same open space. This is called direct supervision, a way to build bridges and respect, and to ensure control through guards' awareness of prisoner actions.
"What we have here is a city," said the warden, Leslie Woods.
It's a city with a school, a chapel, an infirmary, a laundry, kitchen and dining facilities, and a sewing shop where the inmates make their white uniforms.
Two-man cells measure 77 square feet, enough room for bunk beds, a desk, a light, a pair of windows that are 5 inches wide by 4-foot-4, and a combination wash basin-toilet.
No privacy
There is no privacy in a prison. And, in blistering hot Texas, there is no air conditioning, either. But a television set in the day room blares constantly.
"Let's face it, people are fed up with crime and early release of prisoners," said Bob Price, a Texas architect who helped design the state's prototype 2,250-bed prisons. "You need more prison space."
Maryland is in the midst of a decade-long effort to add 11,500 beds ata cost of $550 million.
California has five 2,200-bed prisons in planning stages or under construction. But that's just an appetizer. After legislators passed the nation's toughest habitual offender law earlier this year, California prison officials estimated the need to build 20 new penitentiaries at a cost of $21 billion to house 81,000 new convicts.
At the federal level it's the same story: 24 new facilities are scheduled to open by 1999 as the system breaks the 100,000-inmate barrier.
And all of this costs money. Big money.
The crime bill working its way through Congress would authorize spending $13.5 billion for state prison building grants. By comparison, the Clinton administration proposed spending $4 billion to fund the Head Start program in the 1995 fiscal year budget.
Constructing a prison, though, is relatively cheap compared with the costs of housing prisoners.
"Operating these facilities will make the billions spent building them look like a drop in the bucket," said Allen Patrick, an Ohio-based architect who has designed prisons for 30 years.
Hot wire, cut costs
The push to cut costs is so intense that in California they have discovered a way to slice manpower on the guard towers and $10 million a year from the payroll.
They electrified the perimeter fences.
"I have every reason to believe that if you touch the electric fence you will die," said Kevin Carruth, California's deputy planner for prison construction.
In Texas, they will stick with razor wires and bloodhounds, holding operating costs to $26 million a year for each of their 2,250-bed, maximum-security prisons.
"When you are building prison beds you are pouring money into the back end of the criminal justice system," Mr. Collins said.
"To stop the level of crime you have to treat the symptoms at the front end. That means identifying at-risk children and putting dollars in programs that teach self-esteem and policy."
But for now, Mr. Collins said, "The general populace has decided they have not spent too much on prisons."
And that's a good thing for a town like Kenedy.
They have a housing shortage now, so they will need to build apartments. That means jobs. Restaurants are poised to cash in on the coming trade. And that also means additional jobs.
But the core of the economy will be the permanent work force that arrives next year when the prison on the plateau opens.
"We've got 900 jobs that are going to be here for the next 100 years," said Trip Ruckman, president of the Karnes County National Bank.
Even Mr. Collins agrees that, in America, there are unlikely to be many prisons closing down in the next century.
"It's like the line in the movie 'Field of Dreams'," he said. "Build it, and they will come."