See: State To Close Newest Prison, on the cover of any Colorado newspaper, 20 March 2012 et. seq.

As an amateur essayist I live for the times when I can say, "See I told you how corrupt, ignorant and dirty these fuckers are! They hate you for not giving them your money more willingly. See, see, see!" Budget time in Colorado Dept. of Corrections (CDOC) is always one of those times.

My introduction to lock up budgeting came when I move to Fort Collins Colorado in the mid 1990's. The local jail had undergone some renovation (or received and spent public money for some rationalized public benefit) that I recall as $8 or $9 million. Two years later the sheriff's office wanted $13 million for an expansion and a Larimer county commissioner caterwauled in the local paper (The Coloradoan) that the voter’s position on the matter as a bond issue was not relevant because he would just transfer the money from civic programs. I meant to write a letter asking where he got his master's degree in circular reasoning; thinking that taking money from programs teaching people to not get snared in the criminal justice system was a better investment then in an expansion of a jail - that had just received a properly bonded tranche of public treasure in the last voting cycle. I believe the money was given by the voters - the bond was approved - ¬leading me to wonder if the threat of reallocating funds tipped the scale.

When I had the misfortune to land at that jail a few years later the completed expansion was unoccupied; awaiting changing of some regulation governing occupancy permit standards. Do you not just fucking love politics? The current, and bigger, scandal involves the state's second maximum security prison - Colorado State Penitentiary two (CSP-II). The first CSP was only the eighth max plus prison in the country when built in {1986(?) early 1990's (?)}. It served its function so well (fn. 1) that it became a popular control option and inmates were relegated there for longer terms - first increased to three then five years - to be effectively buried alive and forgotten by anyone but the staff. This created a full maximum security facility and the need for another one. The mid ought years, under Governor Bill Owens, were defined by the circle jerk to get CSP-II financed and built without any citizen scrutiny. He came up with "certificates of participation." Investor banks financed construction of CSP-II and the Colorado University Medical School by buying this paper called "certificates of participation" instead of the proper name for such a debt which is instrument "bonds."

Beyond the illegal financing scheme, coupling a prison with a university med school is an obviously shrewd ploy to get a prison built that would not be approved as a stand alone project. The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (www.ccjrc.org) tried to stop the illegal financing aspect with a law suit that was shot down by the Colorado appellate court ¬some how rationalizing that the state constitution authorized the state to borrow money by invented means. (Does anyone remember "negotiated orders of withdrawal," in which one could issue a slip of paper authorizing a withdrawal from their bank account for the amount written on the slip; more commonly, a "check" !

There was no shortage of unknown investors willing to bankroll this off the books project ($101 million for the prison, $186M for the med school). I challenge anyone to find out who owns this state paper; my guess - Carlyle Group, Bechtel Engineering, Hensel-Phelps Construction, Goldman-Sachs…

Anyone can now say that, regardless of political malfeasance employed to make the money appear, the project was gratuitous and wasteful. The whole boondoggle was exclusively for the benefit of the unknown investors, who are scheduled to continue getting paid until the debt is terminated in 2023. Since the debt does not have a constitutional obligation I would enjoy a legislative debate to not pay it. It did not come with the security of a state "bond" so should the investors not have known of the perils of voluntary "participation?" The banks that lost $7 trillion in global wealth since 2008 told their investors exactly this, "you knew the risks" bullshit.

Fn. 1: e.g. the surviving inmate that killed Jeffery Dahmer is housed there via a prisoner swap with Illinois.

Next entry: Regarding the gratuitous and wasteful nature of building CSP-II only to close it a few years later: Can that paradigm be extended to prosecutions and resulting inflated sentences? The system needs more prisoners in the short term, prosecutors provide them, prison expansion ... Then since the expansion was fabricated it collapses under its own weight of contrivance!

Title of your next poetry slam: "Weight of contrivance." ;-)