I‘m heavily involved in the self-hosting community and I already run a bunch of services at home but I was wondering if anyone has experience with self-hosting jail? 

Apologies for the wall of text incoming but there’s a lot to consider!

Pros:

1. It’s a lot of fun to self-host and you learn a lot
2. I see an opportunity here because there’s always crime happening which means business generates itself. 
3. I could probably run some targeted ads on social media platforms to promote crime and attract more potential customers
4. The customers can be incentivized to work which is rewarding for them since they can give back to the community.
   • They could produce merch helping me cover the cost of self-hosting, win-win! 
   • I looked into the economics and actually they don’t really ask for money, they are very generous and just want to give back! 

There are also some cons though:

1. The starting costs are pretty high, I would have to expand my house significantly 
2. NIMBYs, I can imagine they would cause trouble if they learn that I self-host a jail even though it’s a lot of fun and potentially generates jobs for the community. There can be many sticklers in the better neighborhoods.
3. Death penalty. Some states have it and I find it very inefficient to kill your clients. They could do work instead.
   • I would have to be careful to avoid such places
4. DEI. I looked into the system and it’s not very diverse. We would have to educate the recruiters from law enforcement to do better.
   • They seem very biased in their sourcing process. I would like this to be a place for everyone and I don’t think they are sensitive at all regrading this topic.
   • Plus they seem to be randomly shooting potential clients which is super unprofessional and inefficient?!
5. Vibes. I watched some movies and there’s a lot of issues with jail culture. I would have to invest a lot into educating the clients to battle e.g. homophobia which seems common or also fascism.
   • Apparently there’s some labor union called “Aryan Brotherhood“? And labor unions are mostly separated by race? This is obviously not okay.
   • Maybe it’s not good to allow unions in the first place as they struggle to foster an inclusive environment and there seems to be a lot of in-fighting

Any ideas? Anyone done this before? As a European I’m still new to the US system but was fascinated that it’s possible to run private jails, it’s much more inclusive than the socialist place where I’m from. There, the government has a monopoly on incarcerating people, totally disregarding the fact that it’s a lot of fun to self-host and incentivize them to work at almost no cost! It’s hard to try out new stuff in a place without freedom :(

It's bike spokes, I swear.