Well those state officials are heavily invested in private prison companies.

WTF is wrong with people?

Tennessee is a barbaric state. Check out print and podcast series The Kids of Rutherford County. Absolutely horrible. People need to be jailed, but it won’t happen.

Welp, seems Tennessee has become jealous of Texas and Florida.

Skipping the middle man funneling the money straight to core civic

Having experience with the US foster system, plenty of group homes keep non-violent kids in what many people might consider jail-like conditions. And some worse because as far as I know prisons don’t chemically restrain all their residents so that they’re all asleep by 7:00.

This sucks as a bill. But so does the entirety of the foster system. Policy around it doesn’t impact a voting block, so they get away with a lot efforts that were just for show. And if you never experienced the system from any angle you probably wouldn’t be aware of how bad it is. The federal laws are all treated like suggestions and every county does things completely differently.

And then insurance companies, RTFs, shelter care, and many others make a killing off of these kids. Everyone not looking to profit ends up traumatized and eventually attacked and pushed out.

Whole thing is fucked.