Prisoners are a lot like corn. Like corn, prisoners are a commodity government pays for. That's why Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter wants more prisons, right away. Caught in a public-private entanglement, he serves a ravenous beast that feeds on criminal flesh and gets hungrier by the day. The state needs the beast; the beast needs the state.

When the Bush administration created massive subsidies for private enterprise to make fuel out of crops, the ethanol industry built plants and demanded corn. No corn, no government checks. As a result, we have a nation awash in corn - more corn than anyone ever dreamed we could need. Thousands of farmers, who once produced a variety of foods consumers wanted and needed, now produce only corn. Loads and loads of excess corn that serve no purpose other than satiating an artificial venture which will never stand on its own because it serves no genuine need.

Likewise, when states began paying private enterprise to house prisoners in the 1980s, a new industry built prisons and demanded flesh. No prisoners, no government check. The inmate population grew by leaps and bounds, a surplus generated by the war on drugs and bizarre new sentencing laws that keep non-violent offenders in prison for years. Today, more than one in 100 Americans live behind bars and the United States has more prisoners than any country in the world. Attach government checks to corn, and corn will be grown to fill an artificial demand. Attach government checks to prisoners, and the system will deliver them in droves…

The Colorado Department of Corrections on Tuesday outlined a massive five-year, $800 million plan to add state prisons, including expanding the Trinidad prison and building a mega-facility somewhere else in the state.

DOC Executive Director Ari Zavaras said that despite aggressive efforts to reduce recidivism, an increase in parolees and any changes in sentencing requirements the Legislature might approve, Colorado still will need more prison beds as soon as it can get them. Zavaras, who was DOC director when former Gov. Bill Owens put the kibosh on state prison construction in 2000 in favor of contracting with private companies, said he warned lawmakers then not to allow the private/state prison ratio to surpass 20 percent.

As of this year, it's reached 22 percent, and without any new state beds coming online, will hit 40 percent by 2012, he said.

Colorado should begin serious talks about expanding some of its state-owned prisons, the head of the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee said Tuesday. Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, is upset that private prison companies operating in the state incarcerate about 20 percent of all state inmates. He says with one company running four of the five private prisons here, they have too great a negotiating position and can dictate terms to the Legislature…

In just two months, two executives of the nation's largest prison business gave $2,400 to various campaigns in Colorado, nearly triple the total amount contributed a year before. According to records from the Secretary of State's office, high-ranking officials with Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America went on a spending spree during the last two months of 2007, contributing money to the candidate committees of seven state legislators, usually in $400 increments, the highest legal amount…