privatisation
1 Jul 2009
Should Punishment Be Profitable?
The furore about prison privatisation in NSW raises important questions about who should be permitted to enforce punishment, writes Clair MacDougall
In last year’s mini-budget, the NSW Government announced plans to privatise two prisons: Cessnock Correctional Centre in the Hunter Valley and Parklea Correctional Centre in Sydney. Opposition to prison privatisation was spearheaded by the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) and resulted in the plan to privatise Cessnock prison being scrapped.
The PSA’s "Stop the Cell-Off" campaign, widely supported by prison workers and officers, coincided with a NSW Legislative Council inquiry into the privatisation of prisons and prison-related services, the results of which were released last month. The committee cautiously endorsed the privatisation of Parklea prison but recommended that no further prisons be privatised in NSW. Significantly, it pointed to the need for increased government monitoring of private prisons and greater transparency. The NSW Government will continue to assess whether prison-related services, such as transportation and court security, will be privatised.
The PSA, on the other hand, argues that the proposed Parklea privatisation will compromise the welfare and safety of both prison staff and inmates on the grounds that private companies will be looking to cut staff and costs. Furthermore, it claims that it is ethically wrong to profit from the "suffering" of others, suggesting that the profit motive of private corporations may lead to higher levels of incarceration.
The push toward privatisation in Australia began in the late 1980s and the motivation was cost-reduction. There are currently seven privately-run prisons in Australia: Fulham Correctional Centre and Port Phillip Prison in Victoria, Junee Correctional Centre in NSW, Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre and Borallon Correctional Centre in Queensland, Acacia Prison in Western Australia and Mount Gambier Prison in South Australia. The NSW Government’s privatisation proposal, reportedly initiated by Commissioner of Corrective Services Ron Woodham, also focused on cost reduction. The recent parliamentary inquiry, however, found no conclusive evidence that privatisation of the two prisons would cut costs by $15 million. A 2005 NSW parliamentary inquiry into prison privatisation also found that no definitive conclusions could be drawn as to the cost-effectiveness of privately run prisons.
Worryingly, several privately operated prisons and detention centres in Australia have already been closed down or reverted to state control due to mismanagement and abuse. The Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre in Victoria was taken into state control after widespread reports of abuse, drug use and self-harm led the Correctional Services Commissioner to launch an independent investigation. The Commissioner found the contractor — the Corrections Corporation of Australia — had failed to maintain security and address drug abuse problems within the prison. Woomera Immigration Detention Centre was closed down in 2003 after reports of detainee abuse.
Internationally, the major push for prison privatisation began in California during the 1980s, due to the growth of the prison population and the consequent overcrowding of the state’s prisons. California now has the biggest prison system in the western industrialised world, and over two-thirds of the 348 prisons and detention centres in the US are privately operated. By 1998, prison privatisation had become such a politicised issue in the US that Atlantic Monthly journalist Eric Schlosser coined the now ubiquitous term "prison-industrial complex". Schlosser used this term to reflect the "set of bureaucratic, political and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need", and to draw attention to the problematic relationship between corporations, profit and punishment.
The growth of the prison system in California shows that the profit imperative of privately run prisons, coupled with government policy, can lead to increased levels of incarceration. There is a great deal of evidence that prison privatisation — rather than giving rise to a more cost-efficient and "effective" penal system — in fact encourages higher levels of sentencing and incarceration of non-violent offenders and increased spending on corrections.
There are significant differences between the size, scale and ethos of the criminal justice and penal systems in Australia and the US. However, the companies that are major players in private prisons in Australia are subsidiaries of US prison companies, such as the GEO group, Management and Training Corporation, and Australian Integrated Management Services — as well as Australasian Correctional Management, the operator of Woomera Immigration Detention Centre and a subsidiary of American company Wackenhut Security Corporation.
Privately owned prisons can’t be held accountable in the same way as state-run bodies because of "commercial privilege". This means that what goes on inside privatised prisons is often not disclosed to the wider community because commercial law and privileges inhibit disclosure of information to the public. Furthermore, there is often insufficient government monitoring and regulation of private prisons, and state and federal governments are not always informed about what is happening on the inside. This was evident in both the cases of Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre and the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre. While private operators are ultimately accountable to the state, the lack of transparency and government oversight that is a product of the commercial nature of the relationship, means that they cannot be held accountable by the public.
Advocates of private prisons argue that a clear line can be drawn between the sentence handed down by the courts, and the enforcement of that sentence within prison. However, Wollongong University finance academic Jane Andrew, who has written extensively on the issue of accountability in relation to private prisons, draws special attention to the quasi-judicial powers of private prisons, which are not subject to the same checks, balances and procedures of the legal system. Many decisions regarding the mode and methods of punishment are made within the prisons themselves, rather than by the courts. For example, prison management can transfer inmates between different security levels, place them in solitary confinement, strip them of certain privileges and even play a role in determining the length of a prisoner’s term. Because private companies are not democratically elected, nor are they accountable in the same way state bodies are, granting them the power to make decisions about the length and methods of punishment is ethically fraught.
Our society justifies punishment in the name of democracy, but that means we need to make sure our system of punishment is run according to democratic principles — principles such as justice, transparency and democratic accountability. Can we realistically expect these principles to be upheld if we allow private companies to play a significant role in enforcing punishment?
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I strongly believe that if a person offends against society, then society must take responsible for any punishment. Privately run prisons are simply not acceptable.
What’s next? Privately run police forces and courts? Where does it end?
Well, peter 5044, you only have to look to the USA to see where it can lead. Judges are elected by Counties, States and other jurisdictions, and the whole system open to corruption. Indeed, Police are most often city-owned and based, and their Chief an elected or Mayor appointed person, again subject to corruption on a massive scale. America has the largest prison population the world, mostly negroes and Hispanics, who are generally too poor to afford ‘Justice’, which like health, is quite incredibly expensive, and the Private Prisons are simply training grounds for more criminal activity, whilst affording massive profits to the operators.
I am dead set AGAINST Private Operation of any Correctional Centre in Australia or anywhere else.
You only have to look at the mainly US Private Armies running around Iraq and Afghanistan (Halliburton) , killing and maiming and raping at will, and unaccountable to the local Governments, untouched by their own Governments, and again ripping billions off the US taxpayer.
We have a very sick world when we pass on such activities to people and organisations, seemingly unaccountable to anyone, whose whole purpose is to make profit from the miseries of others.
Was it not K.Rudd who has postulated that the totally unregulated Free Market Pig Swill was dead in the water, after the Big GFC!?
I suppose the questions is, just who and what is K,Rudd?
A good friend of Right Wing Labor State Governments, supporting them in their every endeavour to destroy the fabric of our Society.
A good friend of Gunns Ltd. in Tasmania, who are intent on destroying the environment of Tassy.
A good friend of Anna “Margaret Thatcher” Bligh in Queensland, who is intent on selling off the Queensland jewels for a quick profit to the Chinese.
Pretty good lurk for Big Business, have the Public pay for the setting up of the infrastructure, at excellent loan rates, then buy the assets for a song when the States have a fire sale. Dazza.
Not sure why you’d chose to link all this to Krudd, Dazza. AIMS, ACL and GSL were all well established running facilities in Oz more than a decade ago.
The privatisation of prisons is a big factor in the US having the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world.
“The Land of the Free.”- and people say American’s don’t “get” irony…
Dr Jane.
I cant find anything in the comments posted so far that any rational person could disagree with. One reason Howard and his corrupt government favoured private schools and why so many other state-owned enterprise, facilities and institutions have been “privatised” is to enable governments to get the costs of staffing and maintaining infrastructure off their direct expenditure balance sheets.
The folly of this is illustrated by the current state of Victorian rural freight rail network, privatised by the Kennett Government and allowed to deteriorate under private hands until the for-profit “owners” simply walked out, leaving the state to pick up the tab for the vital rebuild.
Another factor is the politician providing for his “retirement benefits”, deferred seats on the boards, consultancies and managerial roles with the companies to which the contracts are let for these abominations.
The issues of incarceration and punishment are however, even more critical to our ethical “state-of-the-nation” and the degradation of societal principles on so many fronts by the NSW government and others in our country should be resisted by everyone.
Talk to your friends, write to the papers and the MPs. We all need to do more than simply comment here. Amcara