Locking people in cages – good old fashioned American entrepreneurship

They* say “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” So, I suppose, if you build a better peopletrap, they’ll construct a four-lane highway to your mammoth corporate headquarters.

Eagle Modular – www.jailcells.com – Detention Housing

Modular "detention housing" - the ease of a mobile home with the charm of a human cage.

Eagle offers the only proven cost effective solution for immediate correctional facility expansion that meets and or exceeds the stringent requirements needed for detention housing. Our pre-engineered steel welded design offers the same quality of security you find in conventional brick and mortar structures for a fraction of the cost.

“Thanks for everyone’s help at Eagle as we work together in helping us reduce our overcrowded jail” -- Jason Cody, Finance Director, Carter County Tennessee

(Johnson City Press, Carter County, Tennessee) The modular units will house 96 prisoners convicted of misdemeanor crimes. Those prisoners who are serving felony sentences will remain in the current jail on the second floor of the Carter County Justice Center. The modulars are the first phase in the settlement of a federal class-action jail overcrowding lawsuit.

The county paid Eagle Corp. of Peoria $920,000 for the modulars. The cost of site preparation raised the cost of the project to $1,282,456. Eagle Corp. President Tim Tobin said it would have cost the county three times that amount to construct a conventional building to house 96 prisoners.

“I feel we have saved the county millions of dollars,” Henson said. He based his opinion not just on the novel building, but also in avoiding a court decision in the lawsuit.

“We were three times the population the (old) jail was designed for. As overcrowded as we were, our chances of wining in federal court were slim to none,” Henson said.

And just what is driving the county jails in Tennessee to be so overcrowded with misdemeanor offenders?  Could it be that possession of any amount of marijuana in Tennessee, or even marijuana paraphernalia, is a misdemeanor punishable by one year in jail and a $2,500 fine ($250 minimum)?  Could it be that there were 38,889 “drug abuse violations” in Tennessee in 2007 (according to the FBI), and since 47% of all drug arrests nationally are for marijuana, Tennessee arrested over 18,000 cannabis consumers, presumably jailing most of them for some period of time?

People often ask me why, if the facts are so obvious about marijuana, that it isn’t a slam dunk to overturn prohibition?  Go visit the list of Eagle Modular’s suppliers and try to imagine how many jobs are created at both Eagle and these corporations because of the federally-forced demand for human cages.  There’s a clue there.