Andrew Jarecki

She can't raise the money in a bond offering.

So they go after the COVID money that they got from the government, which is not designed to build prisons, right?

It's very hard to argue that building prisons is something that's going to relieve some other kind of health problem or whatever.

Right.

And then I think they get fined for that or you have to pay a fine if you use government money for a thing that's not supposed to be for.

And then when they start construction, they still can't raise the money, but they start building the new prisons even before they're authorized by the legislature.

That's how clearly it was communicated that these prisons were going to happen.

In other words, we had a crew in Alabama that was watching this site of this one massive prison that they were planning on building.

And there were just bean fields.

And it was quite beautiful, actually.

And one day I get a call from somebody and they say, we got to start filming because there are 25 earthmovers here.

And I said, well, that's impossible because the legislature hasn't even approved the new prison construction yet.

And they said, well, the prison construction companies know what's happening, and they're already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to clear the site.

So the fix was in on this new prison construction.

And the governor announced that it was going to cost $900 million to build three new prisons.

So far, they've broken ground and are far along on the first prison, and it's up to $1.3 billion.

So when you open that door, a whole lot of of whole lot of commerce comes in, a whole lot of companies come in, you know,

And they asked them, why was it so expensive?

How did it go from $300 million for one prison to $1.3 billion for one prison and counting?

And they said, well, you know, it's inflation.