The sun is bright and hot in this busy urban setting deep in the heart of Houston. The hum of Interstate 45 fills the air at this banal scene. There are no historical markers or narratives dedicated to the Olympic Motel. 43 years ago on a January afternoon, 87 undocumented people would be lined up in front of the Olympic Motel, awaiting processing. Those acting as security and overseeing the process were exclusively white. This is day one of the world’s first and largest private prison company.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is a multi-billion dollar private prison corporation. Co-founder of CCA, T. Don Hutto, ran a cotton plantation called Ramsey Prison Farm in the 1960s. The mostly Black convicts there were forced to pick cotton for no pay. Hutto’s family, who lived on the plantation, even had a “house boy,” an unpaid incarcerated Black man. The other co-founder is Tom Beasley, an Army veteran, lawyer, businessman, and former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. Beasley first thought of private prisons while at a presidential fundraiser for Ronald Regan. He needed someone who knew about managing prisons and T. Don Hutto was the perfect candidate.
Convict leasing was a system of penal labor instituted after the abolishment of slavery in which Southern states leased prisoners to private railways, mines, and plantations for a profit. Many believe the legacy of convict leasing can be found in private prisons. Prison privatization brings together governments in need of additional prison capacity with private companies that can supply that capacity.
A page on the CCA website entitled Three Decades of Service to America, features a video of Beasley and Hutto looking back on the first contract they secured at the Olympic Motel. They talk jovially reminiscing about how they secured the “first contract ever to design, build, finance and operate a secure correctional facility.” The duo struggled to find a suitable facility in Houston on a timeline of four months. They came across the Olympic Motel, leasing it for four months. They recall hastily converting the building and staffing it with family. “We got our first day’s pay for eighty-seven undocumented aliens.” T. Don Hutto bragged that he even fingerprinted them himself.
Today, after years of bad press, Corrections Corporation of America is known as CoreCivic. New name. Same company. Just 12 miles north of the Olympic Motel is CoreCivic: Houston Processing Center which houses undocumented people today. President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to allow its contracts with for-profit prison companies to expire. Stocks for CoreCivic fell 18 percent following news of the executive order.
