If memory serves, it was Control Data’s founder and deep thinker William Norris who first came up with the idea of having private companies run prisons, and indeed CDC and RCA both got into the business: now that the idea is being seriously proposed by the Adam Smith Institute over here, another company with computer connections, Xerox’s partner Rank Organisation Plc must be the ideal candidate to become the first private prison operator – instead of blowing up all those redundant holiday camps for TV commercials, a simple conversion job would turn them into ideal prisons, and they wouldn’t even have to change the regime very much.
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