Prison Privatisation Report
International
No. 46, March/April 2002
Published by the Public
Services International Research Unit (PSIRU),
www.psiru.org/justice
This publication is
supported by a grant from the Foundation Open Society Institute.
IN THIS ISSUE
MTC marching on?
Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC)
is the preferred bidder for
MTC is expecting to be
contracted to finance, design build and operate the facility. Perimeter
security will be provided by the government. Once contract negotiations are
completed the facility should take between 14 and 18 months to build.
According to Mr Mike Murphy, MTC’s director of marketing, corrections, a rival bidder
known as Corrections Corporation of Latin America (CCLA) appealed against
the government’s choice of MTC. Mr Murphy says that a formal decision on the
appeal is imminent and he is optimistic about the outcome. “Our intelligence is
that this company [CCLA] has no operational experience,” Mr Murphy told PPRI.
MTC is banking on this project
to convince other governments in central and south America to not only
privatise but also move away from the semi-private model currently being developed in
Five years ago MTC operated
four prisons. Now the company has 14 contracts including one each in
MTC’s international operations will
be overseen by Wayne Scott who, before retiring in 2001, was executive director
of the
n MTC staff mistakenly released a prisoner from
the Central North Correctional Facility in
High hopes but private finance
more expensive
The government of
Speaking at the official
opening of the Kutama‑Sinthumule maximum security
prison at Louis Trichardt in the
“We shall continue to explore
private financing options for prison infrastructure development, not only
because of the need to drastically expand the capacity of the system to deal
with this massive overcrowding situation in our prisons, but also because of
the obvious strain such a building programme would have on public funding,” he
said.
However, in a speech on
“However, in view of ... the
high cost of private financing, public sector financing for prison construction
remains the most cost effective option. Nonetheless, the government will
continue to explore private financing options for prison infrastructure
development, even though this is not the ideal, because of the need to drastically
expand the capacity of the system due to
the massive overcrowding situation in our prisons and the obvious strain such a
building programme would have on public funding. Notwithstanding the above
mentioned limitations regarding private sector funding for prison
infrastructure development, there is a continuum of options for involving the
private sector in the provisioning of infrastructure services in the
corrections environment.”
The new prison is financed,
designed, built and operated by South African Custodial Management (SACM) a
consortium equally owned by Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation and Kensani Corrections - a local
empowerment company
involved in operating inmate programmes, procurement and
maintenance services. The construction subcontractor in SACM is CGM, an
unincorporated joint venture composed of three local construction companies: Concor Construction, Group 5 and Makhosi
Holdings.
Costs questioned
Keeping prisoners in
Mr Russell Mamabolo
of
According to
Training based on Australian
package
“During my initial welcome and introduction to the course
I asked how many were up at
This was written by Mark
Butler, ACM’s training manager at the company’s
Fulham Correctional Centre in
Writing in the spring 2002
issue of All Points Bulletin, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation’s in-house magazine , Mr
Butler also said that training manuals
and lesson plans had to be based on the Australian correctional industry
training package and competency standards. Manuals and plans were then
rewritten from ACM’s Australian operations to reflect
the South African legal and correctional systems and the procedures.
A total of 213 correctional officers, three area
managers, nine unit managers and six supervisors had to complete the
pre-service course before
COUNCIL OF
Prison rules to be updated
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is
due to decide on whether to update the European Prison
Rules. For the first time the draft terms of reference for the exercise drawn
up by the Council for Penological Co-operation - a
standing committee - includes the management of private prisons as
one of the issues that needs to be examined. Although the rules do not
constitute a model system they do provide a minimum standard for all aspects of
prison administration for member states.
Securicor moves in
The Dutch subsidiary of British firm Securicor has been awarded a contract by the government to
run detention facilities for offenders imprisoned for drugs‑related
offences. Securicor
n Securicor EMS Inc
has been awarded a $30m electronic monitoring contract by the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts. The federal contract covers 50 states plus
Privatisation considered
The government of
Immigration contract tenders
Short-listing of bids for the federal contract to run
detention centres in
A new immigration detention
centre to be built at
n ACM’s parent company
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation’s fourth quarter
2001 profits were boosted by the influx
of refugees to Australia. WCC’s chief executive
officer George Zoley referred to “positive Australian
immigration centre contract performance.” The Australian Financial Review,
n The contract between ACM and the department of
immigration and multicultural affairs (DIMA) to run the Woomera
detention centre north of
n Three officers employed by ACM at Woomera detention centre who allegedly seized, interrogated
and assaulted a 13 year old unaccompanied Afghani boy have been given their
jobs back after first being fired in March 2002 over the December 2001
incident. The officers were reinstated after ACM held an internal investigation
into the incident. The outcome of a police inquiry is awaited. A former
detention centre medical doctor who both witnessed and reported the incident
told The Age,
n ACM has lost a Supreme Court appeal against a
decision to pay workers compensation to a former officer at Port Hedland detention centre. Todd Francis suffered post
traumatic stress disorder after he led officers dealing with a riot in May
2001. He has been unable to work since the riot and, in August 2001, ACM fired him.
Western Australia Workcover ordered ACM to pay Mr
Francis compensation back dated to June but ACM appealed.
n The Adelaide Magistrates Court has ordered the
DIMA to produce some 50 boxes of documents relating to
n The human rights
commissioner of
More details by email from:childrendetention@humanrights.gov.au
Also see the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities
Commission website at www.humanrights.gov.au
Management of prisoner
‘sub-optimal’
The
She also raised concerns about
policy and practice at the MCC which is run under contract from Victoria
Police by Australasian Correctional Management Pty Ltd (ACM), Wackenhut Corrections Corporation’s Australian subsidiary.
“The case raises serious
concerns about the training and monitoring of custody staff when charged with
the responsibility of managing intoxicated persons. Apart from Mr Mathieson [the shift manager on the night in question],
none of the staff was aware as to what was comprehended by the half hourly
checks ...with the exception of Mr Mathieson, all the
custody officers displayed a lamentable lack of familiarity with the requirements of the policy in relation to
intoxicated prisoners,” said the coroner.
Mr Lamb, 22, had been arrested by police for being
drunk and taken to the custody centre where he informed the duty nurse that he
had also taken six mogadon tablets. Custody staff mistook
Mr Lamb’s subsequent condition for a deep sleep, the coroner noting that “they
are not qualified to make clinical assessments,” she said. Mr Lamb died from
aspiration of vomitus and toxicity to alcohol and nitrazepam.
The coroner also considered
that ACM’s duty nurse should not have recommended
that Mr Lamb be
kept at MMC and that “she should have arranged for an ambulance to transfer the
deceased to hospital.”
A report commissioned by ACM
and submitted to the inquest doubted the purpose of waking a prisoner in such a
condition every half hour.
The coroner noted that, since
Mr Lamb’s death, the
company had made some changes which “would seem to go a long way towards
addressing the issues that arose in this Inquest. Primarily this is a training
issue, but it should not end there,” she said. The coroner’s recommendations included: that there should
be “refresher training ... provided to custodial staff to ensure continued
familiarity with ACM policies and procedures” as well as “on the job monitoring
by senior staff to ensure that the policies and procedures are complied with.”
Record of Investigation into Death, State Coroner
Acacia filling up
n Sodexho now has a
‘worldwide correctional services market champion’. He is Mr Herb Nahapiet, a director of Sodexho
subsidiary UK Detention Services Ltd. According to Sodexho’s annual report for the financial year ended
December 2001, as well as its prison contracts in the UK, Australia and France
it provides food services to five detention centres in Spain, 21 detention
centres in the Netherlands as well as detention centres in the Italian cities
of Avellino, Aversa, Benvento and Pozzuoli.
Correctional services contributed Euros 91m, just one per cent of Sodexho’s worldwide revenues for the financial year
2000-2001.
Corporate Governance Inquiry
No share in refinancing
windfalls
The government of
The most high profile prison
project refinancing to
date has been that of Group 4/Carillion’s Altcourse
prison in
n
Bids in for Arthur Gorrie
Four companies have been invited to submit tenders for
the management of
n
Between 1950 and June 2001, the official population of
New public sector prison
A new prison commissioned and operated by the public
sector is to be developed in the Northland region. Corrections minister Matt
Robson stated that:“This
will be the first Maori design prison in the world. It will target re‑offending,
and it has a far better chance of reducing crime than the old style prisons,” he said. “Up to 350
of them will now serve their sentences in their own communities, under the
watchful eye of families and whanau. Offenders are
more likely to be accountable for their crime when closer to their community.
There is little to be gained from shipping an offender from the North to a
prison in
n According to the 2001 annual report of
nThe Labour party has pledged its philosophical
opposition to prison privatisation if it wins next November’s general election.
Labour is currently part of a coalition that governs
n Chubb New Zealand Ltd provides prisoner escort
and court room custodial services to 11 courts and three prisons in Northland
and
Industry gives $1.1m to
campaigns in southern states
Private prison companies gave more than $1.1m in
campaign contributions to state‑level candidates in 14 Southern states
during the 2000 elections, favouring incumbents who typically have a high rate
of re‑election, according to a new study.
The study by the Institute on Money
in State Politics also said that much of the campaign cash went to influential
members of key committees that consider prison‑related legislation.
“Using these strategies, the companies made sure that more than 90 per cent of
their contributions in the 2000 cycle went to candidates who would actually
vote on the decisions that affected their bottom line,” noted the study.
Key contributors were
Corrections Corporation of America, which made more than 600 contributions
totalling more than $443,300 to candidates in 13 states; Wackenhut
Corrections Corporation, which gave 336 contributions totalling more than
$237,750 to candidates in six states; Cornell Corrections, which made 284
contributions totalling nearly $100,000 in three states; and Correctional
Services Corporation which gave 208 contributions in two states, for $97,670.
In several states where
private‑prison interests gave heavily, lawmakers subsequently passed
measures to bolster private prisons or defeated efforts to reduce funding for them.
“In many cases, lawmakers considering the policy decisions received campaign
contributions from the companies that stood to profit from the decisions,” the
report said. It provided several examples:
n The North Carolina Legislature approved Senate
Bill (SB) 25, authorising the state to contract with private firms for building two new
prisons that the state will then buy back. The legislators
who sponsored SB25 received
$3,700 in political gifts from proponents of the legislation. The bill was
first sent to the Senate Finance Committee, where more than 60 percent of the
members had received at least one cheque from private‑prison interests;
contributions to committee members totalled $21,303. It later went to the House
Finance Committee, where nearly half of the members had been among the
beneficiaries of $8,950 in campaign contributions. And it was signed by
Governor Michael Easley, who received $40,675 in campaign contributions from prison
interests, leading the 14 Southern gubernatorial candidates in private prison
contributions.
n In Georgia, the Legislature rejected both a proposed
ban on future private prisons without permission from state or local authorities and a ban on the importation of
sex offenders or other violent criminals. House Bill 456 won approval in the
House, but died in the Senate Corrections, Correctional Institutions and
Property Committee. Nearly 60 per cent of the Senate candidates received at
least one contribution from an industry source, compared with just 24 per cent
of the House candidates. Four of the nine Senate committee members received
contributions of $2,700. In all, private prison contributions totalled $56,650,
with 95 per cent of the money going to incumbent candidates, who typically have an
extremely high rate of success in their re‑election contests and thus
were likely to be acting on legislation affecting the industry.
n
Private prison interests gave
$52,100 during the 2000 election cycle, and nearly 83 per cent of that money
was given to winning candidates. Nine of the top 10 recipients of private prison funds
favoured SB 397, while the tenth was excused from voting on the legislation.
n Lawmakers in Mississippi allocated $6m in 2001
to pay for empty prison beds for non‑existent inmates and then overrode a
gubernatorial veto of the funding, thus keeping the money in the budget. During
the 1999 elections in
n In Florida, lawmakers considered two bills to
abolish the state correctional privatisation commission and transfer its duties. Both
measures arose from concerns over conflict‑of‑interest allegations
involving the staff of this oversight body and the consultants with whom they
worked. Both bills died.
Executives and lobbyists for
private prisons were active
campaign contributors in 2000, giving 122 candidates more than
$158,400. And more than half of the House and Senate candidates, or a voting
majority, received at least $1,000 in contributions from industry sources. Wackenhut Corrections gave $12,500 of its $65,200 on 1
November and 2 November, just hours
before the deadline for contributions at
n
“On top of the strategically
made contributions, the companies employed powerful lobbyists to push their
interests in the halls of the legislatures, at a cost that’s difficult, if not
impossible, to
measure,” the report noted. By using both lobbyists and targeted campaign
contributions, the companies made in-roads during 2001 legislative sessions in
Southern states and blocked legislation that would have been harmful to their interests.“They paid handsomely to play the public‑policy
game, and likely will do so again,” concluded the report.
A Contributing Influence: The Private‑Prison
Industry and Political Giving in the South, See www.followthemoney.org
Industry hits on the Feds
The Association of Private Correctional and Treatment
Organizations (APCTO) has been actively promoting its members’
interests lately (see PPRI # 45, 44, 40 and 37). Last November, APCTO members met with top
officials of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to discuss, amongst
other topics, the merits of out sourcing and the importance of fair and open
competition. The department of justice (DOJ) has out sourced only one per cent
of its workforce and, according to APCTO, the OMB has asked for “help in
identifying potential activities and services the DOJ could competitively bid
out to the private sector.”
APCTO leaders also held a
panel discussion with congressional staff members on “the positive attributes
of privatisation in the correctional treatment and juvenile justice fields” on
APCTO’s 2002 federal legislative
agenda includes: creating a privatisation caucus in the US Congress; supporting
a measure that requires all federal government departments to allow private
industry to compete for contracts where there exists an opportunity in the
private sector to provide a similar or same service; developing a relationship
between APCTO and appropriate federal government agencies and the US Congress;
and increasing the opportunity for private correctional and treatment
organisations in the 2003 financial year budget process. APCTO’s
annual membership meeting took place on
n APCTO has announced that Jim Macdonald,
corrections industry stock analyst with First Analysis Corporation, has become
a member of the organisation.
Unions put their views
The American Federation of Government Employees
(AFGE), along with various labour, religious, criminal justice and public interest
groups, hosted a prison privatisation policy briefing for more than 40
congressional legislative assistants from Republican and Democratic offices at
the Capitol building on
The briefing centred around
the privatisation of federal and state prisons, discussing whether contracting out the management and operations
of prisons to private, for‑profit companies save money; how well do
privately operated prisons perform; and, should the federal government rescue
the industry by initiating a $4.6bn prison privatisation initiative over the
next ten years.
Some of the sponsoring
organisations joining AFGE included the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Communications Workers of America
(CWA), the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and the Public Safety and Justice Campaign (PSJC). AFGE represents over
23,000 federal correctional officers and is the largest union for government
employees, representing 600,000 federal workers in the
Feds need contingency for
private prisons
With more than 18,000 federal prisoners kept in
privately owned or operated facilities the Justice Department should develop
contingency plans in the event that bankruptcies or other financial problems
disrupt services. Most private prison space is provided to the department of
justice by three companies: Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation and Cornell Companies
Inc. The justice department’s Office of the Inspector General report is dated
July 2001 but was only published on
The Department of Justice’s Reliance on Private
Contractors for Prison Services, Report No.01-16, is on the internet at
www.usdoj.gov/oig/audit/0116/index.htm
n Corrections Digest
Quality of prison operations in the US federal sector:
a comparison with a private prison, by Scott D. Camp, Gerald G. Gaes and William G. Saylor in Punishment & Society,
Sage Publications, London , California and New Delhi, January 2002.
This article argues that previous comparative studies
in the
Private Corrections Industry,
Beds and Cons - Changing Dynamics, Areas of Potential Growth. Morgan Lewis Githens & Ahn, Inc, January
2002.
See www.mlga.com
A stock analyst’s report which concludes that “the
strength in stock prices of private corrections companies since November 2000
is ... sustainable over the long term. Despite slowing growth of prison
populations at the [
Prison Legal News, Vol. 13, No.5, May 2002. PLN,
This twelfth anniversary issue includes articles on
bailing out the
Corporate-sponsored Crime Laws by John Biewen, April 2002.
See
www.americanradioworks.org/features/corrections/index.html
This American RadioWorks
correspondent explores how some groups with vested interests work to influence
public policy.
Private Prisons for Dummies:
The Wild Ride of Corrections Corporation of
Paul’s Justice Page,
www.paulsjusticepage.com/crimepays.htm
A web page “created to counteract the public relations
money spent not just by private prisons but the larger criminal
justice-industrial complex.”
Privatising Justice, the
Impact of the Private Finance Initiative in the Criminal Justice System. Researched and written by the
Centre for Public Services for the Justice Forum, published by the Justice
Forum, March 2002. c/o Association of Magistrates
Officers, 1 Fellmongers Path,
See also www.amo-omline.org.uk and
www.centre.public.org.uk
The report for this coalition of five trade unions
draws on case studies of prisons, courts and police services in the
HLM, The Howard League Magazine, Vol.20, No. 2, May
2002, Howard League for Penal Reform, 1 Ardleigh
Road, London N1 4HS, England. Email:howardleague@ukonline.co.uk Website:www.howardleague.org
The current issue includes five articles on prison
privatisation and the private finance initiative (PFI).
Public Investment in Infrastructure: Justified and
Effective, March 2002, The Institution of Engineers,
A discussion paper from the IoE
which details the arguments for and against public investment and advocates
increased public expenditure for improving assets: “... many policy makers do
not understand that markets, while working well in most sectors of the economy,
have their limitations when it comes to providing infrastructure. Governments
also need to be aware that in many cases the private sector cannot provide
infrastructure, and in many others, while it can provide infrastructure, the
economic cost of private provision is far higher than the cost of public
provision.”
Commercial in Confidence: An Obituary to Transparency?
By William de Maria, in Australian Journal of Public
Administration, Blackwell Publishers, December 2001.
This article addresses the issue of accountability and
transparency in relation to the use of commercial-in-confidence clauses to
withhold information. “The commercial-in-confidence exemption practice, insofar
as it quarantines official information from public scrutiny, is an infection of
the democratic body politic.”
The book discusses the legal, moral and political
issues surrounding
South Africa - Privatising the
Prison System by William G. Martin, in African Political Economy Monthly
(incorporating
This article examines the introduction of private
prisons into
Facing the Facts: A Guide to
the GATS Debate by Scott Sinclair and Jim Grieshaber-Otto,
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, March 2002. More details from
www.policyalternatives.ca
This analysis provides a detailed critique of official
World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) rebuttals [of critiques], documenting numerous instances where they provide
simplistic or misleading assurances about the threat to public services.
“Nowhere are GATS proponents on shakier ground than
when they assert that the GATS fully protects public
services through its so-called governmental authority exclusion. For example,
WTO director general Michael Moore has asserted that ‘GATS explicitly excludes
services supplied by governments’ - a bald statement that is clearly untrue.
This controversial exclusion- which proponents claim protects public services -
is, at best, unclear and subject to conflicting interpretations. At worst, if
narrowly interpreted by dispute panels, the exclusion is of little or no
practical effect.”
ENDS
Prison Privatisation Report International
Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU)
School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
30 Park Row,
Internet:www.psiru.org/justice
Email: Stephen Nathan, stephennathan@compuserve.com