I can’t speak to the private prison stuff, but having grown up in the 80s in the US, I can tell you that the Wikipedia article is not complete for the 80s.

There was an enormous anti drug push at the time, culminating in 1989. It was everywhere in the culture that I experienced. Maybe a backlash to the popularity of cocaine at the time, I don’t know.

We even had video games displaying “say no to drugs” in attract mode

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Don%27t_Use_Drugs

>There was an enormous anti drug push at the time, culminating in 1989. It was everywhere in the culture that I experienced. Maybe a backlash to the popularity of cocaine at the time, I don’t know.

Maybe that's just biased by your memories? If you came of age in the 80s, you're obviously not going to remember all the anti-drug/tough on crime stuff that happened in the 70s. Note that just because that there weren't many developments in the 80s, doesn't mean that they weren't doing anti-drug programs in your school. It just means that the relevant policies were already enacted.

The wikipedia article for "tough on crime" also shows a similar timeline. Crime became a political issue well before the 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_order

As far as I know, none of the first ladies from Nixon, Ford, or Carter were on TV regularly talking about drugs.

Edit - added: The Clinton years saw even greater rate of increase in prison population, and for most of the same reasons.

"Reagan's presidency marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law violations increased from 50,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 by 1997."

Indeed the "drug war" began before the private prison industry, but it has directly and indirectly influenced drug policy to protect and expand its business. https://justicepolicy.org/research/gaming-the-system-how-the...