I feel confident I know more about prisons and their construction than anyone who has yet spoken- I spent most of a decade living in motels in little watermelon towns around the US and Puerto Rico (NO big city, or even a small city, wants a prison nearby) firing up the electronic stuff located therein. If you look at the bid specs for any jail or prison in this country about to go up, there are NEVER more than 12 or 13 companies listed as being ALLOWED to bid,(that is from a NATIONAL pool) and its likely most of THOSE arent in a position to start a 2 year job at any given point, maybe limiting the nationwide choice to perhaps a half dozen.-- Thats, a HALF dozen construction outfits in the WHOLE country that can build prisons--it's VERY specialized work, and just because you can build a school or an office building DOESNT mean you can build a prison. A prison which can hold 1,200 inmates--having the required built-in school, medical section, kitchens, (one I worked on in Florence, AZ has THREE kitchens) etc. would be some $75 million in Florida--and THATS in the continental US--imagine the incurred cost of ALL the concrete and heavy equipment being shipped across the Caribbean, and the hundred or so guys building the thing being paid hardship money to live in a chithole like Gitmo. As with many jobs that Halliburton gets, damn few other companies could accomplish the job.
