Jobs were scarce and developers were passing it by. So the civic leaders of Bowling Green traveled to the state capital to compete against a dozen other Missouri communities for three new state prisons. In March 1996, Bowling Green landed a prison. Bowling Green's prison courtship is exemplary of a relatively new ritual that is spreading rapidly as rural towns seek to capitalize on skyrocketing incarceration rates in the United States.
Punishment is now a leading rural growth industry.
The 1980s saw so many people dragged in shackles from inner city neighborhoods to rural prisons that 5 percent of the national increase in rural population between 1980 and 1990 is accounted for by prisoners. Prisons have replaced factories as the economic centerpiece of many small towns. Towns responded by lining up for the chance at such bounty. Prisons do not use a lot of chemicals, do not create noise or atmospheric pollutants and do not lay off workers during recessions. In an area where the industrial or agricultural base is declining, a new prison may seem like a godsend.