On a cold wintry night in March 1986, the private prison movement began in Pennsylvania. At 1 a.m., under the cover of darkness, a couple of busloads of inmates from the overcrowded Washington, D.C., prison system arrived at the private for-profit “268 Center” in Armstrong County, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time. After more than a year of lobbying by a coalition of organizations led by the Pennsylvania Prison Society in opposition to the introduction of private prisons to the state, the arrival of the buses from Washington was the event that convinced both the executive and legislative branches to take action.
District of Columbia officials had not notified Pennsylvania officials that the inmates were being transferred to a facility in Pennsylvania, the Inquirer article said. However, when the governor’s office learned of the transfer, it had the state police escort the buses with the inmates to the state line and out of Pennsylvania. The General Assembly quickly and appropriately responded by passing a moratorium on private prison facilities, which was signed into law by Gov. Richard Thornburgh.
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