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Thank you to the authors for doing their homework and including Mr. Toersbijns. As a student of public administration at USC and as a 1995 graduate of Casa Grande Union High (the old campus in the middle of town), I can tell you that none of this is all that surprising. The dropout rate in my day was 50%, meaning half the kids I started school with as a freshman didn't make it to senior year. The teen pregnancy rate in Pinal County was the highest in the nation.

Pinal County has long served as a dumping ground for surrounding counties that expel students for drugs, violence and gang activity. Local and state government is blinded by prison-generated revenues and is therefore uninterested in addressing the real issue, which is that the needs of the state's youth, including kids from the rez, and extremely poor white, Hispanic and black kids, are not being met by the adults in their lives, and rather than using legislation to help these kids avoid a life of crime and recidivism, legislators give priority to corporations and special interest groups that profit at the expense of these youth.

Hey Arizona, if you ever want to be a state that's more than a hub for tourists, retirees, prisons and military (none of whom give a crap about your schools or your students), you better start funneling the financial incentives you get from CCA, while you have them, back into your schools and social welfare programs. And if you don't want to be the nation's dumping ground for criminals, you better find a way to take your economy back from those who don' care about the quality of life in your state.