Diary of a Mad Law Professor.

A few years ago the author of this article visited a maximum security prison in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Waynesburg is a former mining and farming community that, having fallen on hard times, lobbied for and received the booming economic opportunity embodied in a nice new state-of-the-art correctional facility. On the experience of that visit the author comments that the prison expansion is the fastest-growing industry in the public sector of the American economy. The U.S. has the highest prison population in the world and teachers and childcare providers are among the lowest paid and least respected of any industrialized nation.