Are prisons an economic boost to California towns?

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California spent nearly $7 billion on prisons in 2008, nearly triple the amount it spent in 1999, according to the Pew Center on the States. But can that money trickle down to the towns where prisons are located?

Cities and counties throughout the state certainly hope so. As the state begins to implement AB 900, an Assembly bill that authorizes the building of new facilities and the expansion of old ones, locations hit hard by the economic slowdown are hoping a prison might prove the answer to their troubles. Prisons create jobs in construction, they figure, and staff are routinely paid more than $80,000 a year.

Mendota, a town in the Central Valley 35 miles west of Fresno, is about to test this theory. A federal prison was just completed there, and town officials say it will create jobs, bring business to the town and help pull it out of a slump they attribute to the drought.

But in Delano, a rural town in Kern County that’s home to the most recently completed state prison in California, locals say that prisons aren’t the answer. Unemployment in Delano is still high, and residents complain about rising crime.

‘Prisons do not provide the kind of economic stimulus that so many towns thought they were going to get when they agreed to have one,’ said Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a USC professor who has studied the effect of prisons on rural towns throughout the state.

Still, for many towns like Mendota, where unemployment tops 40%, can a prison really make things any worse?

Check out the story on prisons to find out more.

-- Alana Semuels

Top photo: Mayor Robert Silva of Mendota hopes a federal prison will bring jobs to his town.