From 1984-1996 private prisons spread like wildfire across Texas. In 1984 the first private prison opened in Texas, and by 1996 there were 38 private prisons either operating or soon to open in the state.
Real Cost of Prisons Project works to strengthen and deepen the organizing capacity of grassroots prison/justice activists, to provide a social, economic and political context for understanding mass incarceration and to broaden public understanding of the economic and social consequences of mass incarceration.