It's because state/county/municipal law says all contracts must be given to the lowest bidder.Totally agree that place needs fixed. I'm not sure why we have so much trouble building and running jails.
The lowest bidder typically has the least educated or dumbest engineers to design the facility for the lowest cost with some under the table untraceable trips to Cancun or elsewhere for the people that make the decision to go or not go with the contract.
Untraceable you say? Happens every day. The person being influenced takes the trip on their personal credit card so that it appears everything is aboveboard.
A week or two later, a cash envelope is delivered. Filter the money back into the account or just keep it as cash to spend and it's not traceable.
We had an engineer/manager at our workplace back in the day that was doing this. He didn't make enough money to take trips up the amazon on first class river boats and other exotic destinations on his salary. The decisions he made about millions of dollars of equipment he was responsible for just didn't make sense and cost the company millions to correct.