This section outlines the destructive relationship between public funding and private finance in the city of Detroit, that together contributed to the production of a contemporary ruin in the Wayne County Jail Project, a carceral structure that decayed in situ for over a decade in the 2010s. That structure embodied a version of Walter Benjamin's creative destruction wrought by seemingly opposing forces of capitalist withdrawal and development simultaneously, as suffused in public/private relationships that characterise contemporary American governance. It also explores how developers' anticipatory geography—in Ghosh's terms—produced a vision for the jail site centered on a real estate mogul's plan to secure an MLS franchise and build a stadium that would "revitalize" the city. This neofeudal vision kept the jail structure in limbo and decay for years while its future was debated, a tactic used frequently by developers.