>Excerpt (my emphasis):
>
>...Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator
>of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states
>offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging
>corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a
>20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would
>remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter
>obtained by The Huffington Post .
>
>
>The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private
>prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of
>its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an
>unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems.
>
>Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with
>revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. The
>company capitalized on the expansion of state prison systems in the
>'80s and '90s at the height of the so-called 'war on drugs,'
>contracting with state governments to build or manage new prisons to
>house an influx of drug offenders...
Privatization is at least a little, and maybe a lot, overblown. CCA hasn't grown swiftly in a while. In 1999 there were 68,000 inmates in their facilities. Now there are 75,000. That's out of about 2.5 million total people locked up in the U.S.
http://www.cca.com/facilities/