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Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison

Women and private prisons

Part of the continuum of women's oppression

The greatest contribution all of us can make to the survival of women who are and who have in prison is to become informed about who it is that is sent to prison, what goes on in prison and then speak out loudly against the myths and lies that surround prisons. The greatest prison wall is community ignorance.

Prison is not an isolated institution, it is part of a continuum in the control of women, whether by our lack of access to economic independence, violence, racism or specific laws that target women such as prostitution and social security. The society that condemns the behaviour of women it imprisons, yet accepts the treatment prisoners are given inside is at best hypocritical, but perhaps more correctly, sadistic. (Amanda George, 'Commemoration of Women who have died in and after custody'. Paper presented at Melbourne Town Hall, March 23 1993).

The women in Australian prisons are generally those who have suffered the worse excesses of racism, patriarchy and capitalism and inside prison the pain and punishment continues. Women inside are charged with twice as many disciplinary offences as men (Women and Criminal Justice Vol 5 (2) 1994). Although women are in for shorter times and less serious offences, relatively more women than men are in maximum security (Amanda George, 'Private Prisons : the Punished, the Profiteers and the Grand Prix of State Approval' 8^th Lionel Murphy Memorial Lecture, 21 October 1994). 10.3% are inside for murder and most of these women were convicted of killing men who had subjected them to years of violence. About 80% of women inside are there for drug and alcohol related offences. This is hardly surprising as the vast majority, approximately 80% of women in prison, are survivors of sexual, physical and other abuse; like many people these women have made use of drugs to deal with their pain. Women are still being given long sentences for social security fraud and in Victoria around 20% of the women in prison are there for shoplifting or car theft, 40% are under 29 years of age, approximately 9% are Aboriginal and approximately 12% are from a non English speaking background (Catherine Gow, 'Just Polemic : Prisons for Profit in Victoria', Just Policy No 3, June 1995). Not only are the women in prison punished, their children are also made to suffer by the state. Around 70% of women in Australian prisons are mothers. Their children, who are usually very young, have their parent taken away and in turn can be imprisoned in 'state care'.

Once inside, women ensure a para-military type regime with a rigid timetable. While men's suicide rate decreases in prison, women's suicide rate increases more than three times. In a country where there is no death sentence 22 adult women have died in custody since 1980 (Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 1988). Since 1990 in Victoria alone there has been at least 57 known deaths of women within weeks of leaving prison (Women and Imprisonment Group 4 / 1996). This fact speaks volumes about their experience of prison. While in prison women are in a state of crisis. Over the period 1990-92 in Victorian prisons there were nearly 200 incidents of self-inflicted injury among the women in custody. Suicide and self-inflicted injury are but two indicators of the severe level of depression, powerlessness and anxiety felt by the women inside.

It's also a daily reality for women in prison and police custody to be assaulted. For every contact visit a woman must go into a room with two officers, take off her clothes, hand them to the officers - not necessarily female - stand naked, raise her arms, lift her breasts, open her mouth, spread her legs, bend over, part her cheeks and remove a tampon if she has one. This sexual assault is the price a woman must pay every time she sees the people important to her.

In 1993 the government attempted to move women prisoners into K Division (formerly known as Jika Jika), the maximum security sensory deprivation unit located inside Pentridge men's Prison. The Save Fairlea Women's Prison Coalition fought a successful twelve month campaign against this transfer. However on December 15 1994 the government announced that Corrections Corporation of Australia (CCA) had been awarded the contract to construct, manage and own the first private women's prison in Australia which will be the first private women's prison in the world outside of the United States!

At least 80% of Victoria's women prisoners are to be handed over to the world's biggest multi-national private prison consortium. This means that Victoria will have the largest percentage of women prisoners in entrepreneurial private prisons in the world.

The private women's prison is to be sited at Ravenhall, which was previously Australian Defence Industries land, located at Deer Park. The site is inaccessible and the land is believed to be heavily contaminated.

The head of a private detention centre in the United States, in an attempt to reduce fears of arbitrary authority by private prison guards said "I review every disciplinary action. I'm the Supreme Court" (J Chan in P Moyle, Private Prisons and Police : Recent Australian Trends. Pluto Press, Australia). Such a statement is real cause for concern. Every internal prison rule has the potential to increase the sentence and numbers of people inside. Thus the profiteers have a financial interest in the disciplinary decisions they make.(George and Lazarus 1994 ibid.)

How can society accept that a woman who commits a breach of prison rules - as minor as getting up late, being in possession of perfume, being unable to urinate in front of an officer when requested - may result in her being put in solitary for a week with only two hours outside? No cigarettes, no TV, no visits.

How can we reconcile ourselves to the knowledge that a child can be pulled out of bed at midnight by uniformed officers and placed into foster care with strangers because there is a 'suspicion' that her mother - a prisoner - has taken drugs? What impact is it having on these kids, who so often think it is their fault that their mothers have been taken away; their punishment? (J Griffin, 'Call my name', Program to Somebody's Daughter Theatre Company production, 1994). How can we accept that a woman who cannot urinate on demand loses contact visits with her children, her friends, her family?

Removing a person's liberty is the most severe sanction available in the criminal justice system. In any democratic system, how and why this is done must be a matter for public concern and must be fully accountable to elected bodies. The state cannot abdicate the responsibility and burden of caring for people in prison to profit motivated corporations.

Under privatisation, the government still pays for the prison and its operation. The obvious ways for private operators to increase profits are to lobby for tougher laws and longer sentences and to reduce services, programs and staff. The experience in other private prisons has been that in order to minimise costs and maximise profits there are lower staff to prisoner ratios and a heavy reliance on electronic security techniques creating a "sensory deprivation environment" where prisoners are subjected to constant electronic surveillance in an environment with little human contact. The state Coalition government cares so little for the lives of women prisoners that it is selling these women and their children to a company whose primary motivation is to generate profit for its shareholders and board of directors.

Further cause of concern is that the contracts with CCA are not subject to Freedom of Information legislation nor open to scrutiny because of so called 'commercial confidentiality'! This has severe implications for the possibility of public scrutiny into conditions in private prisons.

State prisons in Australia have a horrific history. There continues to be appalling numbers of Aboriginal deaths in custody, prisons have institutionalised brutality and violence and an alarming number of women are dead within a short time of leaving prisons (A George, 1993, ibid).

To not take seriously and protest the distribution of profits on the stock markets generated from the infliction of pain and punishment through imprisonment is to completely disregard our responsibility to the women and men whom we are separated by only a wall. It also hides the fact that prisoners are the laboratory rats for new technologies and techniques of social control which ultimately will be used on us all.

The gravity of our responsibility is clear; "being inside gives you an unerasable sense of alienation from mainstream society. The sense that what you know is worlds apart from what most people know never leaves you. Your eyes have been opened and you can never forget what you have seen" (B Hampton, Prisons and Women, University of NSW Press, 1993)

Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison

Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System
 

Politically and socially in Victoria we are being subsumed by the tyranny of economic rationalism and the New Right agenda. Both promote the notions of minimal government, non interference in "the market" and the expansion of the private sector. Economic rationalism places economic considerations above social responsibilities, social justice and human rights. Services are retained or disposed of solely on the basis of their economic viability (profit capacity). Additionally, "there is no need for government except to maintain an army to repel invaders and a police force to stop some maximising individual from knocking off your private property ... any government activity beyond this limited role is said to amount to "intervention in the economy - which is automatically regarded as a bad thing." (Brian Toohey, 'What do the figures mean' in D Horne, The Trouble with Economic Rationalism, Scribe, Australia, 1992, p 53).

The Victorian Coalition State government is pursuing this agenda by selling off public utilities, privatising corrections and prisons and contracting out services to private corporations while simultaneously increasing police numbers and powers and introducing greater penal sentences for dissent and poverty. They are publicly justifying this agenda on the grounds of financial necessity and responsible management. The government is creating an illusion of public debt and a bloated bureaucracy to "justify" its current agenda of privatisation.

According to the OECD, public debt is measured as a proportion of total state or national income (GDP...Gross Domestic Product). "On this basis Victoria's current level of debt is 29%...Compared with other countries, Victorian and Australian debt levels are very low; the current average debt level for OECD countries is 58% of GDP. Comparisons with Australian private sector corporate debt levels, even the most solid companies is still more striking - BHP has debt levels of around 82% while Pacific Dunlop has a staggering 222% (ibid).

The expansion of the private sector into welfare, community services and the criminal justice system, coupled with less government and no alternative job creation nor expansion of services means that more insecurity, poverty and unemployment are the logical outcomes of economic rationalism (Len Cooper, 'Kennett's State of War' in Frontline, February 1993, p 1).

Privatisation is not just the selling of public utilities ie gas, electricity, water, to private corporations; it is the commercialisation of services, corporatisation, contracting out, user pays and competitive tendering. It is argued by those attempting to justify privatisation that "if traditional public services like education, health, transport, law and security are provided by government or (preferably) the market at their real cost to those who want to use them then they will be provided more efficiently and less wastefully" (Mike Salvaris, 'Loser Pays' in Frontline, March 1993, p 4). But economically efficient allocation of services is not the same thing as socially efficient or fair allocation of services and resources. In social terms, a system of full-cost public services will almost guarantee that services go not to those who need or deserve them on grounds of fairness but to those who can afford them. What is overlooked in the debate around privatisation is why most public services were established in the first place; because private enterprise couldn't or wouldn't provide these essential services fairly and adequately to all people at a price they could afford.

Efficiency of public services and utilities is not simply about maximising profits and minimising costs. An efficient public service / utility is one which effectively achieves various public goals; that citizens receive the service regardless of income, education or location, that it contributes to the broader social and economic infrastructure, contributing to full employment, protecting the environment, maintaining good business ethics and being socially accountable.

Since the Coalition Government came to power in Victoria late in 1992 we have experienced massive changes within the criminal justice and correctional fields. Prisoner transport has been privatised and contracted to Corrections Corporation of Australia. The cells under the new Magistrates Court have been privatised as has the security at St Augustine Security Ward in St Vincent's Hospital. The Government is exploring the privatisation of police cells and is embarking on a plan to privatise three prisons in Victoria.

The first private prison is to be a 125 - 200 bed women's private prison to replace Fairlea Women's Prison and to be located in Deer Park. It is to be run by Corrections Corporation of Australia, financed by Societe Generale Australia and constructed by John Holland construction. This will be the first private women's prison in the world outside of the United States. Pentridge men's prison will also be closed and replaced by a remand and maximum security private men's prison in Sale and a private men's multifunctional and remand prison in Laverton North. Victoria will then have the highest percentage of prisoners in private prisons in the world bringing Australia's private prison population to 40% of those imprisoned.

There are serious moral and legal implications of giving over the state's exclusive powers to coerce, to hold people against their will and to administer punishment to commercial profit-motivated corporations. "Over centuries, citizens ... have given governments the exclusive power to do particular, highly important and often difficult things on the understanding that they use these powers for the communal good. Examples of these special powers include the power to raise and maintain an army, the exclusive power to print money and a legal monopoly over the use of force. If and when this (person) is subsequently charged, tried, convicted and imprisoned, the state (acting on our behalf) is exercising it's legal monopoly over the use of force. By definition, imprisonment deprives a person of his or liberty - it is an act of force" (John Ernst, Why we should say no! to private prisons' speech to Deer Park Public Forum on the Ravenhall private prison proposal, Deer Park, 14 June 1994).

Experiences both here in Australia and overseas have shown that private prisons result in greater financial and social costs and it must be remembered that it is still the government that pays the company to run the prison. Additionally, Freedom of Information laws have allowed access to some information about prisons although these rights have been restricted. With the advent of privatisation, "commercial confidentiality" is being used to avoid public disclosure of information related to the planned private prisons such as the contract specifications, possible land contamination, workers conditions and service provision. Threats of defamation by the companies involved has had the effect of silencing debate around private prisons. Possible cross media ownership could also advantage the companies (Shelley Burchfield, Women, prison and privatisation, paper presented at the Annual conference of the Victorian Commercial Teachers Association 1994, Coburg Brunswick Legal Centre

The Victorian Government is proceeding with this sweeping privatisation without any thorough evaluation of the performance of private prisons elsewhere and without conducting an open enquiry to which those with direct experience could freely submit. This is a dangerous experiment; private prisons have failed in the past. We need to improve our prison policies in Victoria but introducing profit will do nothing but compound the entrenched problems with our current prison system.

Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison

Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons

Introduction

The current Victorian Coalition Government's rush to privatise three prisons in Victoria raises many issues for workers and unionists. Prison privatisation plans are not just about the government attempting to avoid its responsibility for the care and rehabilitation of prisoners. Prison privatisation has also been used to smash unions, stifle community debate and undermine workers' conditions and wages.

Currently in Australia there are four private prisons, Junee in NSW and the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre in Queensland are both run by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM). Borallon in Queensland is run by Corrections Corporation of Australia (CCA) and Mt Gambier in South Australia is operated by Group 4.

The experiences of workers in private prisons in Australia highlight a lack of award conditions, non unionisation as a clear management strategy and poor and at times outrageously low staffing levels for both prison officers and support staff ie welfare officers, psychologists (C Allison, Informers arrival linked to jail riot, Sydney Morning Herald, 29/11/94). Low staffing levels and insufficient training has been blamed for the high levels of violence and deaths within private prisons (N Hester, The hard cell in Snoop : a magazine of investigative journalism, Issue 2, Spring 1994, NSW). In addition to the reduction of workers conditions, concerns have been raised as to the effect on workers who are employed within a high technology, sensory deprivation environment. We know what this does to prisoners. Workers would presumably suffer similar psychological and physical repercussions.

Junee has had a controversial history. "Three months after it was opened tear gas was used to quell a riot by more than 100 prisoners after complaints about wet laundry, lack of food and work opportunities. Two months later a prisoner ... was found dead in his cell" (D Belton, Industrial issues of private prisons : a union's perspective in Moyle Private prisons and police : Recent Australian trends, Pluto Press, Australia, 1994). In November 1994 it took prison management four hours using tear gas to quell a riot at Junee. All this during its first eighteen months of operation! There has also been a 30% staff turnover at Junee (Hester, 1994, op cit). Former employees of Junee believe that the under staffing has led to the disproportionate number of incidents for a low-medium security prison. "There were only 140 officers where there should be 210 for the number of inmates. They were recruiting people from the Army and Air Force at first. Now they are employing people off the street (S Burchfield, Letter to McNamara, Coburg Brunswick Community Legal and Financial Counselling Centre, Melbourne). The POAA (Prison Officer's Association of Australia) is "concerned that any lowering of standards of care and provision of services has the potential to prejudice the safety and welfare of officers employed in those institutions (P Moyle, Private prison research in Queensland, Australia in Moyle 1994 op cit). It is alleged that the low staffing is connected to the number of incidents in the prison. There have been two deaths in custody, a murder and another death yet to be determined and a high number of assaults on both officers and inmates (Prison Report : The Prison reform trust magazine, Issue No 22, Spring, Britain). The 1994/95 Ombudsman's Report documented that Junee had the highest number of complaints of any prison in NSW. (The Times, London 16/6/94)

Private management of the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre in Queensland has been under attack from union, staff and prisoner groups. It has had eight prisoner deaths since opening in June 1992. The Prisoner Legal Service in Queensland allege that the death rate which is higher than that of other remand and reception prisons is related to the private management of the prison (The Guardian, London, 8/9/94).

Borallon has come under attack from workers who believe that staff levels are not adequate to enable them to work effectively. Many workers also felt there was no effective method to deal with their concerns. The use of casual labour raised the possibility that anyone who threatened industrial action over safety matters could be easily dismissed (Independent on Sunday, London 27/7/94).

Steve Quinn, a 20 year old veteran of the New Zealand prison service visited Borallon in 1993 and reported that he found the private prison officers "nothing more really than security guards or turnkeys ... They were all at stations, in their little glass cubicles ... They may as well have been standing outside Woolworths and in fact that's where many of them came from ..." (ibid).

Group 4, one of the consortiums which own the tender for Laverton North Men's prison runs Wolds private prison in Britain. According to 'The Times' the "Home Office did not expect to make savings ... but the main object was to inject competition and new ideas and to undermine the power of the Prison Officers' Association" (Independent on Sunday, London, 27/7/94).

Wackenhut has been awarded the contract for the (Sale) Fulham Private Men's Prison. Wackenhut manages the Doncaster prison in England, its weekly cost of 295 pounds per prisoner is 25% lower than a comparable publicly run prison. It has 340, mostly inexperienced staff to run the jail of up to 770 inmates. There have been serious issues since the prison opened, mainly associated with staffing levels, recruitment and training (ibid).

Doncaster's managers (Wackenhut) have deliberately avoided hiring experienced prison officers, nearly all of them members of the Prison Officers Association and have recruited instead non-union people. (C Gow, 'Just Polemic : Prisons for Profit in Victoria', Just Policy No 3, June 1995). In addition, the contract with Wackenhut shows that the Home Office is willing to "tolerate a high level of violence. Penalty clauses which would reduce the managers' fees will not be operated until there have been more than 77 assaults on staff and 148 assaults on prisoners ..." (People's Justice Alliance, Frontline, February / March 1996). Because the Victorian government will not release the contract specifications and details to the public because of so-called 'commercial confidentiality' perhaps this clause is included in Victorian private prisons!

Wackenhut, besides being involved in private prisons also provides private security services in the US including strike-breaking. "Their business in life is to attack trade unions. They bring in armed guards to make it easier for strike-breakers to go to work". In 1992 the company was criticised strongly by a US congress report into their covert surveillance of an environmentalist who was a conduit for leaks about the activities of oil multinationals in Alaska. (ibid)

Corrections Corporation of Australia has been awarded the contract for the private women's prison in Victoria. CCA was also awarded the contract for court security and prisoner transport in Victoria. Since then it's employees have twice failed their firearms accreditation tests (ibid). Tom Beasley, CCA's Chief Executive Officer stated that the role of private companies in running prisons is just like 'selling cars or real estate or hamburgers'. (A George and S Lazurus, 1994, op cit) CCA's only experience in managing private women's prisons is in the US. At their New Mexico prison, women inmates allege their educational and health services are substandard compared with state prisons.

Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison

The introduction of private prisons represents a 'new colonialism' for Victoria's indigenous people. Power over prisoners will be transferred from the present colonial state government to a profit-driven multi-national company. This represents another assault on Aboriginal people who have experienced a long history of oppressive government policies which have been referred to as cultural genocide.

As Coe states,

The reason for emphasising the genocide which has been committed against Aboriginal people is to reinforce the point that the present relationships between Aboriginal people and the legal system with the police as agents can only be understood in the light of two centuries of oppression of Aboriginal people. (P Coe, 1980, 'Aboriginals and the Criminal Law in New South Wales', Proceedings of the Institute of Criminology, Aboriginals and the Criminal Law, p 14).
Over two centuries of colonisation, Aboriginal people have had every facet of their lives controlled and regulated by government policy. Broadly these policies can be described as : invasion, protection, assimilation and self-determination. Invasion was characterised by extreme violence and war. Koories were dispossessed of their land and food sources, were massacred, shot, killed through introduced diseases and poisoned flour and women were raped and killed. Koories responded to this violence through the waging of guerilla warfare (M Christie, 1979, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835-86, Sydney University Press). The extreme violence of the invasion period is shown by the rapid decline of the Victorian Koorie population from perhaps 15,000 in 1834 to 2,000 in 1850, possibly a decline of over 80% (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, 1990, Aboriginal People of Victoria, AGPS)

As it was thought Koories would die out, a policy of 'protection' was introduced. 'Protective' legislation was passed in the 1880s. Koories were forced from their lands; herded onto missions and reserves; and controlled by white managers who had unlimited power over their daily lives (Pat Swan, 1988, Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern, RCADC Interim Report, AGPS. It was also specifically designed to break up families, with "half castes" under 34 years forcibly removed from the reserves to be 'absorbed' into white society (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, 1990, Aboriginal People of Victoria, AGPS). Christie suggests that methods used by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA) resembled the system of apartheid which was later developed in South Africa (M Christie, 1979, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835-86, Sydney University Press, p 199).

Assimilationist policy and legislation appeared in the 1950s. Assimilation sought the disappearance of Koories as a race. "The aim was to create a homogenous Australian society where all Aborigines were to think and act as whites. Thousands of Koorie children were illegally placed in institutions or fostered or adopted to whites ..." Underaged Koorie women were coerced by welfare into adopting their children out, "holiday schemes" operated where children were placed in non-Aboriginal families and never returned to their families, Koorie children were simply snatched or taken from their families and unofficial adoption services operated from hospitals (Phillip Institute of Technology, Pay the Rent Group, 1991, National Aboriginal and Islander Children's Day Magazine, Phillip Institute Student Union, Melbourne, p 26). The Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care states that the period from assimilation to the late 1970s was a major period of removal of Koorie children. The peak of these removal activities is believed to be around 1972 (Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), 1993, Took the Children Away, Removal of Children : Research Feasibility Study, Submission to Health and Community Services for funding for research project, Unpublished, Melbourne, p 3).

In 1972 a policy of self-determination was introduced by the Whitlam government. The Whitlam era saw the introduction of land rights legislation and funding for Aboriginal organisations such as legal, health and housing services. More recently in 1988, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADC) found massive over-representation of Koories in the criminal justice system and that Koories were extremely disadvantaged in areas of health, housing, welfare, employment and education. It also found that over half of those who died in custody were moved from their parents care as children (RCADC, 1991, National Report, AGPS, Canberra).

The criminal justice system has been a key institution in implementing these policies. The police and courts have played a major role in the removal of children, the enforcement of discriminatory laws and in controlling the daily lives of Aboriginal people. The criminal justice system remains a cornerstone in continuing cultural genocide. This is evidenced by the RCADC report and the massive over-representation of Koories in the criminal justice system. Cunneen argues that the removal of children through the criminal justice system has not stopped either. He argues that whilst earlier policies explicitly justified the removal of children on the basis that they were Aboriginal, today children are removed on the basis they are criminal (For further discussion of this see C Cunneen 1994 "Enforcing genocide? : Aboriginal young people and the police" in The Police and Young People in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne).

Private prisons are a return to the segregation and control of Koories by white managers who have unlimited power over their daily lives. Furthermore these white managers are a multi-national company whose primary aim is greater incarceration for greater profit.

The impact on Aboriginal social, cultural and economic life of such policies has been devastating. This is evidenced today in the over-representation of Koories in the current public prison system which is a national disgrace. In Victoria, Koories are almost nine times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Koories (RCADC, Interim Report, 1988, AGPS, p 99). For Aboriginal women, the picture is even worse. In 1989, nationally, Aboriginal women represented 16.3% of the female prison population compared with Aboriginal men being 14.1% of the male prison population (S Payne, 1992, "Aboriginal Women and the Law" in C Cunneen, Aboriginal Perspectives on Criminal Justice, Institute of Criminology, Sydney, p 32).

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADC) found that it is this over-representation which gives rise to the unacceptable rates of Koorie deaths in custody (RCADC, 1991, National Report, AGPS, Canberra). In fact, Koories are one of the most incarcerated groups in the world (B Swanton, 1984, Aborigines and Criminal Justice, Proceedings - Training Project No 27/1/5: Australian Institute of Criminology, Sydney, p 32). As Cunneen has documented, the over-policing of Koorie communities and racist policing practices (C Cunneen, 1994, "Enforcing Genocide? Aboriginal Young People and the Police" in The Police and Young People in Australia. Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p 154) are central causes of this over-representation.

Koories are overwhelmingly apprehended for minor public order offences. This results in Koories gaining an extensive police record which impacts negatively on their future sentencing outcomes and the likelihood of a prison sentence. The RCADC revealed that 67 per cent of Koories who died in police custody were incarcerated for minor alcohol-related offences (RCADC, 1988, Interim Report, p 25). In Victoria, 19% of charges laid against Koories between 1990 and 1992 were for public drunkenness (S James & R Allas, 1994, Policing and Koorie Offending in Victoria. Paper presented at the ANZ Society of Criminology Conference, Sydney University). Decriminalisation of public drunkenness is a key recommendation of the RCADC. This is particularly significant as Victoria failed to decriminalise and is one of the only two states in Australia where public drunkenness remains a criminal offence. This is disturbing in light of the planned privatisation of police cells.

The RCADC stressed that contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in health, housing, education and employment combined with the legacy of destructive government policies means that Koories are particularly vulnerable in prison (RCADC, 1991, Overview and Recommendations, p 6). In order to address these concerns the RCADC recommended that imprisonment be used as a last resort and that self-determination be the guiding principle in prison reform with the Koorie community having a significant input into the management of Koorie prisoners and programs and community based alternatives to prison. In Victoria, two programs currently operating in the North West district as alternatives to imprisonment are the Koorie Justice project in Swan Hill and Warakoo Station near Mildura. The Koori Justice Project is a local initiative which enables Koorie offenders sentenced to a Community Based Order to do their community work with an Aboriginal sites or cultural officer. Warakoo station is a Koorie owned and managed station where some Koories who would otherwise serve their time in prison can serve their sentence. The programs are a realisation of self-determination.

Koorie women have experienced the worst excesses of government policy and practice. They have borne the brunt of both a racist and sexist society and thus are doubly disadvantaged. Koorie women have suffered the removal of their children, the devaluing of their cultural knowledge by anthropologists, the silencing and ignorance of their concerns and sexist and racist violence.
 
"For Aboriginal women particularly one of the most disempowering acts of all was the 'assimilation' policy which saw Aboriginal babies taken from their mothers. The devastating effects of this institutionalisation and forced adoption of Aboriginal infants and children are still and will continue to be a major factor in Aboriginal over-imprisonment for both sexes for a long time to come (S Payne, 1992, 'Aboriginal Women and the Law' in C Cunneen (ed) Aboriginal Perspectives on Criminal Justice, Institute of Criminology, Sydney, p 32).
 
In the criminal justice system, nationally, they fare worse than both white women and Aboriginal men. In fact they make up 50% of all women taken into police custody. The RCADC investigated the deaths of 11 Aboriginal women in custody. Common threads running through the lives of these women were child welfare and intervention and subsequent dislocation from family and culture, abuse of alcohol as a way to cope with this, poverty, imprisonment and health problems. The women were arrested for public drunkenness, fine default and public order offences.

Whilst Koorie women, like Koorie men, experience over-policing, that is, high levels of police targeting, in the public arena. When Koorie women are subjected to violence in the private arena, they often experience underpolicing - that is, their needs are ignored. Judy Atkinson quotes an Aboriginal woman from Cape York : "If a white woman gets bashed or raped here, the police do something. When it's us they laugh. The fellow keeps working around, everybody knows but nothing is done (J Atkinson, 1990, 'Violence Against Aboriginal Women : Reconstitution of Community Law - the Way Forward" in Aboriginal Law Bulletin, p 6). This ignorance is replicated in the prison system.

"Koorie women in custody have special needs, in that they are a small minority group, within a small minority group ... Like white women in custody, the main concern of Koorie women while in custody is their ability to receive visits and maintain contact with their children and family. However, Koorie women are usually extremely isolated due to the geographic spread of their family. As a result, their children are frequently placed in foster care with a non-Koorie family" (C Barry, 1988, 'Programs for Koorie prisoners : past, present and future' in D Biles (ed), Current Australian Trends in Corrections, The Federation Press, Sydney, p 35).

The privatisation of prisons makes a mockery of self-determination. The shift in control of prisons from public to private hands intrinsically shuts the public out of any policy-making role. This is especially crucial for Koories as the right of indigenous people to self-determination as recognised in International Law (Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) will be taken away; a right which has only recently been won by Koories in Australia (In 1972 when the Whitlam government came to power, the government policy in relation to Aboriginal affairs was officially changed from assimilation to 'self-determination'). The prospects for Koorie prisoners already vulnerable in the current system can only worsen as rights will become privileges that can be withdrawn at the whim of private prison operators.

The experience of prison privatisation in Victoria so far shows little respect for the interests of the Koorie community. Statewide Koorie organisations have not been involved in any consultations regarding private prisons. Further, there has been no guarantee that the RCADC recommendations will be implemented. Commercial confidentiality denies the Koorie community access to the contract between the state government and the private prison operators regarding the provision and design of services to Koorie prisoners. The experience interstate also gives no cause to repeat privatisation here. Two out of the eight prisoners who have died in Arthur Gorrie private prison in Queensland were Aboriginal. Of the fourteen people who have died in private prisons between 1992 - 1996, four have been Koori prisoners.

In a private prison maximising profit is the ultimate objective. Prisoners lives become private property rather than public responsibility. The right of Koorie prisoners to access culturally relevant services may well be sacrificed since there is no compulsion for companies to provide Koorie programs. There is no guarantee that existing Koorie services will be retained in a private prison. The welfare of Aboriginal prisoners which currently does not lie in Koorie hands will be further removed through privatisation.

Institutions are removed from societal gaze and prisons are surrounded by not only a concrete wall but by a 'wall of silence'. Prison privatisation plans will further remove access to public scrutiny, debate and questioning. A similar silencing occurs around indigenous human rights abuses. Amnesty International and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have conducted recent research into the vulnerability of Koorie people to abuse of human rights in the criminal justice system (Amnesty International, 1993, Aboriginal People and the Criminal Justice System in Australia; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1991, Racist Violence). Privatisation means a double veil of silence for Koorie prisoners particularly in light of the findings of the RCADC. The difficulties experienced by families accessing information about prisoner deaths in custody may be increased.

Private operators have a financial stake in continuing and even increasing rates of imprisonment and over-representation of Koories as they often are paid on a per prisoner per day basis. Companies also form a very powerful law and order lobby group on justice issues.

Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison

Imprisonment is an isolating, dislocating and frightening experience for any prisoner. For those from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) these experiences can be intensified. Many prisoners from non-English speaking backgrounds have to contend with a racist culture both within and outside the prison as well as the active discrimination from courts, police and correctional institutions. Despite the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of 'race, colour, gender, marital status, physical disability, religion, political affiliation or national origin' in Office of Corrections operational principles, NESB prisoners frequently experience discrimination whilst in prison. This discrimination takes the form of a lack of specific services for NESB prisoners, the inability of NESB prisoners to access the services available to other prisoners and the often racist and ignorant attitudes that inform both Office of Correction policy and the practices of many prison staff. As a result, NESB prisoners can serve lonelier and more difficult sentences than Anglo prisoners.
 
This article will only bring up some very general issues regarding NESB prisoners and will focus specifically on NESB women prisoners. The term NESB covers an extremely diverse group of people. Within the context of the prison, NESB people often share many experiences of discrimination and isolation. However the people are divided by cultural background, gender, sexuality, proficiency in English, education, class and age.

In Victoria NESB women prisoners make up approximately 17% of the female prison population. This 17% includes both Australian residents and those who are to be deported at the end of their sentences (Patricia Weiser Easteal, The Forgotten Few : Overseas-born women in Australian prisons, Commonwealth of Australia, 1992, p 35). NESB women are generally over-represented amongst those prisoners who are on remand and underepresented amongst those serving sentences. This over-representation of NESB women on remand is often caused by discrimination from police and the courts as well as NESB women's lack of familiarity with the legal process and their rights (NESB Prisons Reform Taskforce, 'NESB Prisoners - An Agenda for Change' p 3).

Some women have served up to eighteen months on remand and have then been found innocent. There have been several cases where women who are not Australian residents have stayed in prison for long periods of time on remand, been found innocent and then deported without compensation.

NESB women's experiences of privatisation are often of extreme isolation and deprivation. Many NESB women have complained of racist harassment from both staff and prisoners. This racism takes many forms from verbal harassment and ostracism to threatened and actual physical violence. Many NESB women's religious and cultural practices are ignored or sometimes even banned in prison. In a New South Wales prison Muslim women were banned from wearing the hadjib (head gear) as it was said to pose a "security risk" (Jennifer Welstead, 'Some findings regarding NESB access to services for those affected by the criminal justice system', CRC Justice Support, p 11). NESB women have faced extreme difficulties when attempting to observe fast days and prayer requirements (Easteal, op cit, p 93). NESB women frequently complain of being unable to obtain food that they want to eat or require for their religious needs.

Many NESB women have trouble communicating in English and therefore experience isolation and frustration. Every woman who goes to prison must learn a whole new system of terms, rules and regulations. Obviously, for women who speak little or no English learning this system can be extremely difficult if not impossible. Prison culture and language is based on Anglo Australian cultural norms and vernacular and thus makes little sense to those not familiar with this dominant culture. Traditionally correctional policy, or lack thereof, concerning the specific language needs of many NESB women prisoners has been based on racist assumptions and extreme ignorance. Until recently it was common for officers to be told that repeating themselves loudly and slowly was a solution to misunderstandings that commonly occurred when giving NESB women instructions (Anna Schinella, Isolated Inside : Women on non-English speaking backgrounds in prisons, p 7).

Correctional institutions have made some provisions for non-English speakers in the past five years such as the use of the Telephone Interpreting Service, written translations of some prison procedures and regulations and training programs for officers. However these provisions have been tokenistic, poorly administered and rarely utilised. Relatively new equipment for three way telephone conversations between interpreters, prisoners and staff in NSW prisons are rarely used. Similarly in Victoria the Telephone Interpreter Service is infrequently used by prison officers at Fairlea. This infrequent use of interpreter services is not due to a lack of need.

NESB women prisoners do not have the right to utilise an interpreter when they feel they need one. It is up to the individual prison officer to decide whether a woman needs an interpreter or not. In practice prison officers rarely decide to use an interpreter. It is often assumed that if women speak English well enough to hold a conversation they do not need an interpreter. This is often not the case. When some NESB women experience conflict, pressure and anxiety their English skills can deteriorate. Thus NESB women are often at an extreme disadvantage especially in situations such as parole hearings where it is necessary for women to argue their case. Until NESB women have the right to demand an interpreter when they think it is necessary this situation is unlikely to improve.

Prison staff often rely on English speaking inmates to interpret for NESB women or to inform NESB women of frequent rule changes and general instructions. This leads to frequent and often dangerous misunderstandings. Misunderstandings can be very serious in situations where work safety requirements needs to be understood or when a non English speaking woman needs to communicate with a doctor or psychologist. While English speaking and Anglo prisoners do take care of some NESB women other NESB women are left out. If a woman is not catered for in this informal and lackadaisical system, prison staff often blame the individual woman for being "anti-social". When NESB women are ostracised and disliked by English speaking prisoners it is often due to racism on the part of other prisoners rather than a fault of the individual woman. What ever the reason it should be the responsibility of correctional institutions to provide effective services which enable NESB women to communicate.

Many non-English speaking women rarely have the opportunity to speak to anyone else. Everyday conversation with other inmates is difficult if not impossible. Non-English speaking women who don't have visitors can go for months without speaking to anyone. This situation frequently occurs with deportees as their family and friends are overseas and phone calls are expensive and difficult to make.

Thus many non-English speaking women effectively serve their sentence in solitary confinement. This environment of deprivation, isolation and intense loneliness often contributes to serious mental health problems.

The privatisation of prisons in Victoria is likely to further disadvantage NESB women. Under the public prison system, service provision for NESB women has been frequently cut back in cost cutting exercises. Under a private prison system where the profit imperative is paramount, minority services are likely to be further cut or completely abolished. The isolated sites chosen for private prisons in Victoria will also disadvantage NESB women. In 1992 the NSW Prisons Task Force found that isolated prison locations provided a particular barrier to NESB people wanting to visit prisoners.

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Women and private prisons |  Loser Pays : Privatisation of the Criminal Justice System | Unions, workers and the privatisation of prisons | Koories and Private Prisons : A New Colonialism | Women from non-English speaking backgrounds in prison