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NOTE: Much of the overseas news has been gleaned from a series of 'Prison Privatisation Reports International' and 'Privatisation Factfiles' published in London by the Prison Reform Trust. See advertisement to subscribe. Additional information gathered from international news papers.
*The prison privatisation debate is raging in New Zealand with editorials in favour of privatisation appearing in many newspapers. The Howard League for Penal Reform is one of the groups campaigning against the proposed privatisation of prison, and Wolfgang Rosenbery, barrister and member of the Howard League describes the suggestion of privatisation as a step backwards in penal reform "some of the arguments in favour of privatisation try to obtain more credibility by referring to recent prison escapes. Wartime and prison experience over the centuries shows that people deprived of freedom will try to escape. That the escape rate in New Zealand is as low as it is, with more than 5000 prisoners, suggests that privatisation cannot lead to preventing all escapes.
The small but almost insoluble occasional escape problem is dramatised by the distorted image of the prison population. Recent American research shows that crime and law enforcement issues account for 30% of television time. This is probably the case here to. Thus the public perception of prisoners as uniformly dangerous and malicious is created. Serious violent prisoners do receive long sentences. Figures obtained by the Howard League show that about 3.5% of prison sentences here during the last few years were for four years or more.
More than two-thirds (68%) of prisoners have sentences of one year or less, being small property offenders, offenders against transport and traffic laws, offenders against public order, or drug-related offences. There are too many repeat offenders, and the public prison system needs to focus on changing this behaviour. This may at times be costly.
Privatisation, with its focus on minimising costs and maximising profits on its bulk-funded management, is not suitable for such policies. Incarceration and penal procedures which go with the breach of prison rules are forms of violence which must not be put in the hands of private people. If combined with forced labour, such private powers may be a step towards the reintroduction of chattel slavery.
An effective and humane prison system must rely on public scrutiny. Privatisation removes the accountability based in Freedom of Information legislation, which is excluded because of commercial confidentiality. Libel laws can be used to suppress anecdotal information.
This aspect of the commercial confidentiality of prison privatisation is possibly the least realised but most powerful argument against those who welcome privatisation. Abuses of the bulk-funded system of privatisated prison management must be discoverable. To save money, 24-hour electronic surveillance, replacing individual prison personnel, is widespread in private prisons. This can create sensory deprivation, often considered equivalent to torture.
Reduction in food costs, educational services, and medical facilities can be other forms of increasing the profitability of private contractors. These need to be controlled. So should the contracts between the funders and providers. The ultimate reason against the privatisation of prisons is the creation of a vested interest in mass imprisonment.
Efficiency, in the sense of greater profitability, relies on the economies of scale. Thus, privatisation will lead to large, more centralised prisons, removing many inmates from contact with families and friends. A material interest for more prison sentences is created. The final irony is that the foreign ownership of private prisons would imply the transfer overseas of profits made out of taxpayer-supplied funds and accentuate New Zealands balance of payment problems.
* All new prisons in England and Wales are to be privately built and run. In a speech to the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) annual conference on 19/5/98, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, announced that a Prison Service review found that privately financed/publicly run prisons were not affordable, nor were the transferring of private prisons to the public sector. Rejection of the private/public option is because of objections from the private prison companies. Straw’s announcement completes a Labour ‘U-turn’ on pre-election pledges.
* Alton Manning, a 33 year old black remand prisoner at UK Detention Services- run Blackenhurst prison in the west Midlands, was unlawfully killed by prison staff in December 1995. The jury in the coroners court returned its unanimous verdict on 24/3/97. The Prison Service responded by suspending seven UKDS staff on full pay pending an investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service. A previous inquiry by police found no reason to take action against the staff. In February, the company’s lawyers had applied to the High Court to have the jury denied the option of considering a verdict of unlawful killing. The Home Office supported the move. The application failed but the jury had no knowledge of the application or the outcome, since press reporting was forbidden. Raju Batt, the lawyer for Mr Manning’s family said: "The catalogue of errors at every level of management is quite shocking. We have seen prison officers giving evidence claiming ignorance of matters of life and death".
* HM prison Parc at Bridgend, Wales privately financed, designed, built and run, opened in November 1997 lacking fundamental services and facilities. According to the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), which represents staff in publicly run prisons, disruptive prisoners are being transferred from Parc to the publicly run HMP Cardiff as Parc’s staff cannot cope. Recent incidents at Parc include senior managers being taken hostage by prisoners, and Prison Service Control and Restraint teams being sent to deal with disturbances. The POA also alleges that there are major difficulties with Parc’s young offender population, with no separating of convicted and unconvicted nor of adult and youth. Racism is also a problem among inmates, as is boredom. Since opening, three of the prison’s senior management have all been replaced. As at April, the prison was short of 30 prison custody officers, due to a high turnover of staff. The prison is also short of health care staff, a problem exacerbated by the fact that between 60% and 70% of all prisoners are said to be on some form of medication. The technology is a shambles, with long waiting times for gates to open. The Prisons and Probation Minister, Joyce Quin, has called for a full report. It is believed that the company has, so far, been fined 55,000 pounds for contract deficiencies.
* Another function of the criminal justice system is to be privatised. The Government is planning legislation enabling private companies to trace fine defaulters and offenders in breach of their probation orders in England and Wales. Civilian enforcement officers would have the power to enforce warrants, including entering an offenders home and "to lay his hands on offenders without exceeding their legal powers…..".
* Group 4, along with the construction firm Tarmac, is the preferred bidder for a contract to finance, design, build and run the second of the Government’s five proposed Secure Training Centres (STCs) for young offenders. The facility will be at Onley in Northamptonshire and should be open in early 1999. Group 4 is also about to open the first STC, at Cookham Wood in Kent, south east England.
* Group 4 has also been chosen by the Prison Service to operate a pilot project using a voice recognition system to track sex offenders and drug dealers released on parole. Offenders will phone in at fixed times from certain locations. Their voices will be matched from computer-stored samples. It is the first voice tagging scheme in Europe and Group 4’s first tagging contract. Group 4 runs three prisons, two immigration detention centres and four prisoner escort services in the UK.
* A 450 bed women’s prison is to be privately financed, designed, built and run at Ashford, west London. There are over 3,000 women prisoners in England and Wales.
* Nine asylum seekers on trial for riot and disorder while detained at the UK’s largest immigration centre, Group 4-run Campsfield House, have been cleared of all charges. The prosecutions case collapsed on 17/6/98 at Oxford Crown Court after evidence from some 20 Group 4 staff proved unreliable. Footage from 32 surveillance cameras helped undermine the staff’s version of events. One Group 4 witness even admitted to telling "undeliberate lies". The riot occurred on 20/8/97 after a false rumour spread around the facility that Group 4 staff had strangled and killed two detainees during an attempt to transfer them to a state-run prison.
* Plans to build a new 600-800 bed private prison at Marchington, in the midst of two rural Staffordshire villages, are being fiercely resisted by local people. The Prison Service says that the proposed site is strategically important. But residents argue that there are already two state-run prisons in the area, the Prison Service’s arguments are unsound, and private prisons are problematic. They are calling for a Department of Environment inquiry into the planning process and considering legal action. They are also organising with groups in other areas. Campaigns to stop new prisons have failed so far in Fazakerly (HMP Altcourse), Bridgend (HMP Parc) and Salford (HMP Agecroft). But in Telford, Shropshire, a recent campaign stopped a prison being built and an inquiry is due to be held into the proposed private prison at Peterborough.
* A riot on 25/6/98 at the UK’s first private detention centre for 12 to 14 year olds had to be quelled by 30 anti-riot police with dogs. The Medway Secure training Centre in Kent, South East England, opened in April 1998 with 100 staff. It is run by Rebound ECD, a subsidiary of Group 4. The centre can hold 40 children but only 15 were resident on the night of the riot. The incident lasted ninety minutes. Three staff were injured and at least 5,000 pounds worth of damage caused.
* The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) fears that the Ontario Government is to renege on a contract to make "reasonable efforts" to find alternative employment for staff whose jobs are lost through privatisation. At least 500 prison staff could lose their jobs as a result of the Government’s private corrections plans. Government attempts to privatise other public services have been frustrated because provincial arbitrators and the courts have ruled that not enough has been done to redeploy staff. OPSEU believes that the Government now plans to pass legislation to remove this obligation.
* A District Court judge ordered on 19/3/98 that all maximum security prisoners held in CAA’s North East Ohio Correctional Centre (NEOCC) must be returned to the District of Columbia and replaced by medium security prisoners. The company has appointed a new warden and temporarily transferred senior management staff to the facility. This follows legal action by prisoners and the granting of an injunction preventing any new prisoners being sent to the facility until an adequate classification is in operation.
* An ‘invitation only’ conference in San Francisco in march 1998 provided delegates with an in depth examination of how corrections privatisation could be structured to yield the greatest benefits with the lowest possible risk. The conference was organised by the US Department of Justice.
* Andrew Milotich, a 24 year old prisoner, committed suicide at Wackenhut-run Delaware County Prison in Philadelphia on 16/3/98. The company claims that staff followed all suicide prevention procedures. Milotich, who was supposed to have been checked every 15 minutes, only had a blanket and a paper gown in his isolation cell. The company, which has been running the facility for less than a year, is holding an internal inquiry into the incident.
* State legislators in New York are considering a trade union-supported Bill that would prevent state and local jails from being privatised. Prisoners would only be supervised by civil servants.
* Dr Charles Thomas, director of the University of Florida’s Privatisation Corrections Project, is to face a public hearing into two conflict of interest charges. The Florida Commission on Ethics accepted that ‘he violated Florida statues ... by having contractual relations with private corrections companies ... which conflict with his duty to objectively evaluate the corrections industry through his research through the University’, and also that this ‘impedes the full and faithful discharge of his public duty or creates continuing ... conflict between his private interests and his duties with the Correctional Privatisation Commission’. Central to the Commission’s Order was Dr Thomas’s stock ownership at the same time that he produces an annual report used by investment firms to determine the value of those same stocks.
* Wackenhut Corrections Corporation is facing a class action lawsuit for damages in the federal court in Dallas, Texas. The case is being brought by current and former prisoners at the company’s Coke County Juvenile Justice Centre in Bronte, Texas. The prisoners claim that the company "created an environment wherein girls as young as 12 years old were subject to sexual abuse, received no counselling, no vocational treatment, no case treatment plans and inadequate or inappropriate medical care ... and were made to live in an environment in which offensive sexual contact, deviant sexual intercourse and rape were rampant and where residents were physically injured to the point of being hospitalised with broken bones". As well, a 35 year old counsellor has been indicted following an investigation into allegations that he had unlawful sexual intercourse with a 15 year old resident in January 1998. Another resident of the facility who agreed to settle a sexual abuse case with the company on undisclosed terms in December 1997, shot her boyfriend and then killed herself soon after. The Texas Youth Commission (TYC) is to extend its contract with Wackenhut at this facility. The 104 beds are to be increased by 48 and girls are being transferred to other facilities to make way for boys.
* The third Privatising Correctional Facilities Conference - slogan "tap into this explosive industry for increased revenues" - is being held in New York in September 1998. It is organised by the World Research Group and the Reason Public Policy Institute.
* The American Federation of state County and Municipal Employees, a trade union which represents 100,000 correctional officers and support staff in publicly run facilities, has launched a new, anti-privatisation campaign. The union has also published a report Should Crime Pay? which concludes that ‘prison privatisation creates incentives to grow the prison population, pushing up long term prison costs’.
* The US Justice Department and Correctional Services Corporation (the company formerly known as Esmor) are defending a lawsuit seeking damages for immigration detainees who claim that their human rights were violated at a company-run facility. In 1995, detainees at the Elizabeth Immigration Detention Centre in New Jersey, suffered a range of abuses which included: being shackled to chairs and tables, physical and verbal abuse, substandard food’ inadequate medical care, and constant nerve racking noise and bright lights. The conditions led to riots, which in turn lead to the facility being shut down and Esmor’s contract cancelled. The contract was sold to CCA and the facility has since reopened.
* Correctional Services Corporation reported that its revenues for the first quarter ending 31/3/98, increased 64.8% to $Am19.1m over 12mths. Net profit jumped by over 200% to $1.1m for the same period.
* CCA, which took over the running of the Elizabeth, New Jersey detention facility for the INS (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) is being sued by a former warden, Steve Townsend. Mr Townsend alleges that he was fired for telling the INS that CCA was forcibly sedating and improperly restraining detainees.
* The Open Society Institute’s Centre on Crime communities and Culture held a briefing on prison privatisation in New York on 21/5/98. The event was organised to "explore new evidence and information, including questions about overall accountability, humane and effective operations and long term impacts, along with a look at current privately-operated prisons".
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