Mother Jones: A Brief History of America's Private Prison Industry

A very revealing history of the private prison 'industry', riddled with abuse, rapes, killings, etc. and including a
link to extensive testimony of a Mother Jones writer (Shane Bauer) who worked as a prison guard for 4 months.
Link to Mr. Bauer's article: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer

A Brief History of America's Private Prison Industry
"You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers."
by Madison Pauly * July/August 2016 Issue * Mother Jones

In the early 1980s, the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit. "You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers," one of its founders told Inc. magazine. Today, corporate-run prisons hold eight percent of America's inmates. Here's how the private prison industry took off:

1983 - Thomas Beasley, Doctor R. Crants, and T. Don Hutto start Corrections Corporation of America, the world's first private prison company.

1984 - CCA begins operating a county jail and a juvenile detention center in Tennessee. It also opens its first privately owned facility in Houston, a motel hastily remodeled to hold immigration detainees.

1985 - A federal judge orders Tennessee to stop admitting inmates to its overcrowded prisons. CCA offers, unsuccessfully, to pay $250 million for a 99-year lease on the state's entire prison system.

1986 - CCA goes public, saying its facility design and use of electronic surveillance mean it can operate larger prisons "with less staff than the public sector would have needed."

1987 - Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, later known as the GEO Group, gets its first contract to run a federal immigration detention center.

Mid-'90s - CCA co-chairs the criminal justice task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Among the "model" bills to emerge are truth-in-sentencing and three-strikes legislation that help fuel the '90s prison boom.

1997 - Arguing that it's in the property business, CCA becomes a real estate investment trust for tax purposes. A new affiliate, Prison Realty Trust, raises $447 million for a prison-buying spree.

2004 - A Justice Department report finds a "disturbing degree" of physical abuse by staff and underreporting of violence among inmates at a Baltimore juvenile facility run by the private prison operator Correctional Services Corporation. CSC is later acquired by GEO.

MUCH More: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/history-of-americas-private-prison-industry-timeline