I bought a prison in the United States.

Prisons are a great business, but also a chilling one!

Lin Ge put down his pencil, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the nearly broken fluorescent light on the ceiling.

He suddenly remembered a line from a documentary about private prisons he had watched in his past life.

That was said by a former CCA executive. He faced the camera with an expression as calm as if he were discussing the operation of a supermarket chain.

"People always ask us, how can you make money by locking people up?"

My answer is that we are providing a public service.

"The government needs prisons, but taxpayers don't want to pay for them, so we came into being."

"We don't sell imprisonment, we sell efficiency!"

efficient!

This word brought a bitter smile to Lin Ge's lips.

In his past life, efficiency was also a positive word.

Improving efficiency means creating more value with fewer resources, which in turn means technological progress and a higher standard of living.

But what does efficiency mean in private prisons?

This means using fewer guards to watch over more prisoners, and it means extracting more labor from each prisoner at a lower cost.

They quantify each person's sentence and dignity into a string of numbers, and then look for profit margins within those numbers.

But what can be done about it?

He's already on this ship.

Ray Carson's $54,000 was like a chain around his neck, with the other end held in the hand of that cunning old fox with gold-rimmed glasses.

Danforth's orders are his only lifeline at the moment.

If he can't make the prison profitable within a month, he'll have to use his own organs to pay off the debt.

Lin Ge turned the page with the core competitiveness written on it over and placed it face down on the table.

Some things, if you think about them too much, will only keep you up at night.

What he needs most right now is action!

Just then, there was a knock on the office door.

"Come in."

The door opened, and Hamon walked in, holding a note in his hand:

"I found a lawyer you asked me to inquire about."

"Her name is Eleanor Chan, the same last name as you, but of course I know she's definitely not your relative."

"She's from San Francisco and runs a small law firm in Tulsa that specializes in... how should I put it, more flexible cases."

What constitutes a "more flexible case"?

Lin Ge took the note and glanced at it briefly.

"It's the kind of case where the client doesn't choose their lawyer, and the lawyer doesn't choose their client."

Harmon leaned against the doorframe, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, and shrugged.

"I've inquired; she takes on any kind of work."

"She takes on cases involving sham marriages for immigrants, labor disputes, contract traps by builders, and even tax planning for people—cases that regular lawyers in Tulsa don't handle."

Ringo looked at the address on the note: downtown Tulsa, only three blocks from Ray's office.

"Is he reliable?"

"That depends on how you define it."

Harmon put a cigarette in his mouth and said:

"I can guarantee that she won't be bribed by the opposing lawyer. As for other things, such as what methods she uses to help you get rid of trouble, that's between you and him."

"All I know is that she spent three years in Tulsa, took on a lot of messes, and was never disciplined by the bar association."

"Just for that, he's already quite capable in a place like this."

Lingo leaned back in his chair. He desperately needed a licensed lawyer, but he certainly couldn't find one among the prisoners.

Because this person not only needs to help him deal with the county government, but more importantly, if he wants to really get this prison running, he will inevitably step into all sorts of gray areas in the future.

How should a prisoner's working hours be calculated without violating state law?

How can factory safety standards be circumvented at the lowest possible cost?

Can state corrections department inspections be handled in some "legal" way?

These are things that a lawyer who talks a lot about morality and ethics cannot do.

"How much does she charge?" Lin Ge asked.

"It depends," Harmon said. "One of her characteristics is that she never charges by the hour; she charges by results."

"If she gets the job done, she gets a fee; if she doesn't, she only charges a basic delivery fee."

"The Tulsa Bar Association hates her to the core, saying she turned the legal profession into a salesperson."

"But to be honest, for your situation, this pricing method is the most cost-effective."

"You don't have money to pay lawyer fees right now. If she charges by the hour, she can make hundreds of dollars just by looking at the documents."

Lin Ge folded the note and put it in his shirt pocket:

"Interesting, I'll go see her now."

"Aren't you making an appointment?"

"I bet she doesn't have many clients right now."

……

Eleanor Law Firm is located on the fifth floor of an old red-brick building in downtown Tulsa.

Downstairs was a pawn shop and a store selling secondhand musical instruments. A faded Gibson guitar hung in the window, with a price tag in marker that read "Price Drop, Only $99".

Lingo paused in front of the shop window for a moment and noticed a signature on the neck of the guitar.

He couldn't tell whose it was; it was probably a relic left behind by some country singer who had spent a few years in Nashville and eventually faded into obscurity.

A handwritten notice was posted on the glass door of the pawnshop:

"We buy gold, silver, guns, or other everyday luxury goods at fair prices and pay cash on the spot."

In Tulsa, pawnshops are a better indicator of the true state of the economy than banks.

People pawn things not because they want to get new ones, but because they really don't have the money.

Built in the 1920s, this building was originally the office building of the First National Bank of Tulsa.

Following the Tulsa race riots of 1921, the neighborhood gradually declined, and the banks moved to a more bustling area in the city center.

This red-brick building has changed hands several times, serving as a hotel and budget apartment, and is now home to a group of small businesses and independent practitioners.

As Lin Ge walked into the corridor, he noticed a few slightly darker bricks on the wall.

Those were the marks left by flames during the riots years ago. They were later replaced with new bricks, but the color of the replacement bricks was never the same as the originals.

In Oklahoma, almost every old building bears similar scars.

The dust storms of the past, the bursting of the oil bubble, or frequent racial violence.

People have long been accustomed to living with scars, rather than pretending that scars don't exist.

The walls of the stairwell were covered in graffiti, mostly band names and outdated shows.

Lin Ge recognized several names written on them:

"Cain's Ballroom - the best live music in Tulsa since 1924".

Cain's Ballroom is a legendary venue in Tulsa, where the Sex Pistols played and where Bob Wells' western swing music went national.

But none of this matters to Ringo now; he's a bankrupt prison owner who has no time to care about rock history.

He was simply surprised that such an old neighborhood was hidden in the city center.

However, he made a mental note of it.

These places are usually hubs for all sorts of information, so if you need to find out anything in the future, bars and music venues are often more effective than legitimate channels.