Texas.

Pecos County, Tex., may not be getting much return on its empty for-profit jail, but trying to make the bond-financed project succeed has brought the country publicity.

Eight months into office, County Judge Fredie Capers says he is fielding a regular stream of calls from newspapers as far away as Oregon, wire services and network television from around the country. Most recently, a crew from the NBC News program "Expose" was in Fort Stockton to film a segment on the growing number of private prisons nationally.

"They were lookig for some dirt," said Mr. Capers. Asked if the television crew found any, the judge chuckled and, noting the barren West Texas terrain, noted: "They wanted to know why we had spent $84,000 on the landscaping."

But the predicament of the county's jail financing corporation, which issued the $12 million in tax-exempt junk bonds in 1989, is no laughing matter. Officials in Pecos and four other for-profit projects say they are still looking for inmates to fill the jail and generate fees to make the project's first stand-alone debt service payment in August 1992.

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