Then the private prison,

when did it emerge or what's the history,

the relevant history here for private prisons?

Well, we have the history of the modern private prison era which starts in the 1980s,

but then we have the era that it goes back to the turn of the century.

So, if you like I'll discuss

the original history of kind of how private prisons came about.

So, after or during Reconstruction,

after the freeing of the slaves in this country,

there was in the south primarily,

significant economic problems with

former slave owners or slave holders now not having the people,

the slaves, the workers they needed to run their plantations,

to pick the cotton,

to pick the crops and so on.

So, we developed this in the south,

the system of the Black Codes which were primarily a set of laws

designed to take freed slaves and channel them into the corrections system,

by criminalizing certain behavior that law makers at the time thought were

more likely to be committed by Blacks, freed slaves.

And what this did is it channeled prisoners into prisons and jails for things you know,

like loitering or minor theft charges and so on.

Vastly, you know, Black prisoners.

And then they would take those prisoners and they would lease them out to

private businesses under what was termed the convict lease system.

And where they would go back and they would work for, in some cases,

their former plantation owners or road crews or you know,

in the South, you know, clearing space in the Everglades or manufacturing turpentine.

In Tennessee, it was working in coal mines and so on.

And so, this is kind of a broad history,

there's obviously more detail to it.

But the convict lease system arose as

a direct result of economic needs in the South following Reconstruction,

and the need for free basically labor to replace

the slaves who had been freed and then moved off plantations.

So, the system worked to an extent that you know,

businesses got basically free or very low cost labor.

It did not work so well for the prisoners who were you know,

vastly exploited in very dangerous typically jobs.

And their mortality rate was extremely high.

I've heard for example,

in the coal mining operations in Brushy Mountain Tennessee,

the mortality rate was upward of 40 percent.

And unlike slavery where

plantation owners actually had a property interest in their slaves,

in other words they paid money for them,

so they had an interest in their health and well-being,

at least keeping them alive.

Under the convict lease,

the companies that were leasing prisoners had no such property interest.

If a prisoner died, they would simply

contact the prison and have them send another one over.

So, there was no interest in their safety or well-being,

and this led to extreme abuses within the industry,

and eventually that resulted in the industry being disbanded,

mostly at the turn of the century, 19th century.

And the system kind of died out.

It was primarily, you know,

operating in the south, the southern states,

the former Confederacy States,

and by the early 1900s,

had basically been dismantled.

But that was our first big experiment with for profit prison?

It was. So, it wasn't just prison laborers,

when we talk about kind of the original private prison industry.

So, the companies for example in Tennessee,

they would actually build stockades,

would have the prisoners build their own prisons,

jails and then house them in there for you know,

when they weren't working say in the coal mines.

And so, you had companies basically running these prisons that their workers were

housed in and exploiting them and again the abuses were very high.

And then, you know, at the end of the day when the work was done,

they would return to these, you know,

prisons operated by say the coal mining companies and

the State of Tennessee where

they would sleep at night until they'd go back to work the next day.

So, that was really the beginning of

operating prisons for the purpose of generating profit for private companies,

and exploiting prison labor.

In Tennessee, we have a very interesting history,

those that want to look up you know,

the coal mine wars,

will find out that free world, you know,

non-prison mine laborers,

mine workers revolted against the system because it was taking their jobs.

They couldn't compete with basically free or low paid convict labor.

And they actually, you know,

burned down some of the stockades,

freed the prisoners, put them on trains,

sent them back to metropolitan areas,

in an effort to try to preserve their own jobs and lifestyle,

which resulted in the governor calling out, you know,

armed guard to put down the rebellion.

So, an interesting history in Tennessee.

If you go back and you look at the early beginnings

of the private prison industry and convict leasing.

Now, after the abuses were exposed and then that industry basically shut down,

it remained dormant until the 1980s.

And what engendered its return was again,

basically an economic reason.

So, in the 1980s,

our nation's prison population began expanding what turned out to be exponentially,

into the 1990s and early 2000s.

And if you look at a chart of the prison population in United States,

it kind of trundles along at a pretty even rate up into the 1970s,

and then beginning in the early 1980s,

begins skyrocketing up on an exponential curve

until it kind of flattens out and levels off and about 2010,

where we've seen a very slight decline.

But it's in decline at a very high apex of that chart.

So, what caused this increase was a number,

a series of kind of draconian,

very punitive laws passed the 1980s,

when the war on drugs and the war on crime really took off.

And this includes mandatory minimums primarily for drug offenses,

but also for some other violent crimes.

Truth in sentencing laws that require prisoners to

serve at least 85 percent of their sentences,

three strikes and you're out laws which of course,

were very popular and were adopted by a number of states,

and a number of other laws nationwide.

A lot of them were on the federal level,

but a number of states also followed suit and enacted their own state level laws.

So, the net result of this was a vast increase in our prison population,

and that created a market need because when you're locking up

a lot more people and at the same time you are restricting parole.

So, for example, the federal parole or the parole in

the federal prison system was abolished in 1987.

So, if you're putting more people in on the front end,

but then restricting them getting out on the back end,

you're creating this ballooning effect of people within your system,

more people coming in and staying there for longer periods of time.

This creates a need for bed space.

You know, you need somewhere to put these people.

So, with this need,

this demand for bed space,

it created a demand for increased supply of prison beds.

And this is what caused companies like CCA,

Corrections Corporation of America,

which is based here in Nashville Tennessee to be formed.

CCA was founded in 1983 and its competitor GEO Group,

originally formed as Wackenhut Corrections,

was founded in 1984.

So, these are still the nation's two largest private prison firms,

and they came about to capitalize on this market need for more bed space.

And since then, they have basically expanded considerably.

Both companies have since consumed other smaller private prison companies,

kind of gobbled them up.

And the industry is much more consolidated today than it was in the 1990s.

CCA and GEO group have market capitalization of between 2.5 and 3.5 billion dollars each.

They're enormous companies.

GEO is multinational.

They have operations in the U.K,

South Africa, Australia, as well as the United States.

CCA is domestic.

It used to have international operations,

but currently does not.

And they mainly operate secure correctional and detention facilities,

both on the local state and federal levels,

both for pretrial detainees, convicted prisoners,

immigrant detainees, in some cases juvenile offenders and so on.

So, this is kind of how the modern day industry has risen.

And of course, their niche within

the the prison industrial complex is that they operate prisons for profit.

They directly benefit from incarceration.

The more people they lock up,

and the longer they hold them, the more money they make.

Alex Friedmann: "History of the Private, For-Profit Prison: The Convict Lease System"

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

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