Shutdown Pain Hits Local Jails That House Federal Inmates
- Government isn’t sending checks for prisons contracts
- Bondholders stepping in to help one prison during shutdown
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The partial government shutdown has left local jails across the country scrambling to pay their bills because they rely on money they get from U.S. agencies to house federal inmates, and those checks have stopped flowing.
For some facilities, federal funds make up a large portion of their revenue. A jail in Florida doesn’t have enough money to cover payroll due to the shutdown, forcing it to consider dipping into reserves set aside for bond payments. A detention center in Rhode Island may receive a loan at an 11.25 percent interest rate to stay afloat.