AN ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMICS OF PRISON SITING IN RURAL COMMUNITIES RYAN SCOTT KING MARC MAUER The Sentencing Project TRACY HULING National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities zyx Research Summary: zyxwvu This study is the first of its kind to use statistical controls to measure the effects of prison siting on the host county. We use an interrupted time series design to measure the impact zyxw of prison siting on employ- ment and income indicators in rural New York State from 1977 to 2000. Results indicate that prisons have had no substantive or statistically sig- nificant impact on host counties. Policy Implications: Zn the last decades of the twentieth century, a number of rural areas decimated by chronic poverty due to the decline of the manufacturing and agricultural economy that had once sustained them turned to prison siting as a means of development. The results of this study sug- gest that those decisions have been premature, and counties that rely on prisons to rebuild their economy will receive little return on their invest- ment, while closing off any discourse concerning other means of sus- tainable economic growth. KEYWORDS: Prison Economics, Corrections Policy, Prisons Economic developments and the growth of the information and service sector during the twentieth century left the agricultural- and manufactur- ing-based rural regions of America struggling to maintain financial sol- vency. Governmental attention to poverty primarily focused on the urban poor, whereas farm subsidies and one-time infusions of capital were often relied upon to buoy the rural poor. However, these temporary treatments did little to encourage sustainable growth in the rural sector, and the region continued to spiral downward into an increasingly more dire eco- nomic situation. In the 1980s, as a skyrocketing prison population created a demand for prison expansion, prison hosting emerged as a potential catalyst for eco- nomic growth. With an average of zyxw 35 jobs being created for every 100 inmates being housed, and state prison populations increasing by an annual average of 8.1% from 1985 to 1995, local officials began to consider VOLUME 3 NUMBER 3 2004 PP 453-480