We’ve known for some time that the state wants to build a new prison because it has the most overcrowded corrections system in the country.
It’s a given that state lawmakers agreed to spend at least $350 million on such a facility. A narrative change in recent months has shifted from “additional” space to a “replacement” for the existing Nebraska State Penitentiary, which has been in southwest Lincoln since the 1860s.
The unknown was how the siting for the new prison would be done. Rumor had it that some 70 locations were under consideration. That is until Governor Jim Pillen and his recently appointed State Corrections Director Rob Jeffreys, chose a 305-acre site just a mile outside Lincoln’s city limits in a fast- growing neighborhood of $500,000-plus homes.
