The company was established by Swedish businessman Jörgen Philip-Sörensen, as a division of Securitas AB in 1968.

[2] The Campsfield House detention facility, which was near Oxford, had seen hunger strikes and rioting that resulted in a mass escape over the perimeter fence shortly after it opened in 1993.

[3] Just one year after then-Labour home affairs spokesperson Tony Blair declared that a "comedy of errors" was occurring within Group 4,[4][5] a hunger striker who had been admitted to hospital from the Campsfield House detention centre managed to escape while being transported by Group 4 security officers.

The centre suffered further controversy in 1998, when prisoner John Quahquah and eight others were acquitted of charges of rioting and disorder after it was proved that evidence provided by staff was false and unreliable; the centre was shut by David Blunkett in 2002.

Twelve asylum seekers absconded from the same centre in 2003 by scaling the perimeter fence and vanishing into the night.