Prison Privatisation Report International

No. 63, July 2004

Published by the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), University of Greenwich, London, England. 
www.psiru.org/justice
This publication is supported by a grant from the Foundation Open Society Institute.

UNITED STATES

More misconduct at GEO prison

A GEO Group Inc-run prison contributed more to prisoner misconduct than three comparable publicly run prisons between January 1999 and December 2001, a new study has found. The prison was also within the lower range of performance for low security prisons operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

In order to demonstrate prison privatisation the BOP contracted with GEO (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp.) in 1997 to run a federal prison, Taft Correctional Institution (TCI) in California. The opening of TCI created organisational competition between the BOP and the company in terms of operating prisons cost efficiently and safely. TCI opened around the same time as three BOP prisons at Yazoo City, Elkton and Forrest City. All were built to the same design to hold low-security prisoners.

The study used the outcome measure of prisoner misconduct to assess the quality of operations and the authors argue that “the results were produced with more rigorous methods than were used in previous studies.” TCI contributed to a higher probability that prisoners would be involved in overall misconduct for much of the time period than any of the BOP comparators. In terms of security misconduct, the performance of TCI was “very good”. However, for accountability, property and other types of misconduct the performance of TCI was “worse than expected for most of the observation period.”

The authors also note that, during the period, there were two escapes from TCI’s secure facility and a disturbance when some 1,000 prisoners refused to return to their housing units for a 10pm count. The escapes “threatened public safety and the disturbance had the potential to threaten public safety and surely threatened the safety of inmates and staff at TCI.” None of the comparators had such events: there was only one escape from any BOP prison during the same time period.

They conclude that: “Having noted that the prison probably met minimal standards, the fact remains that performance at Taft was an issue ...TCI had the highest positive results for random drug tests in comparison to all BOP low security prisons for the time period January 1998 through June 2003.”

The authors caution that, while the results provide additional evidence about the respective quality of operations at private versus public prisons, they do not generalise to situations outside of the BOP.
Quality of Operations at Private and Public Prisons: Using Trends in Inmate Misconduct to Compare Prisons, Scott D. Camp and Dawn M. Daggett. 7 June 2004. The authors are based in the BOP Office of Research and Evaluation. The opinions expressed in the study do not necessarily reflect those of either the BOP or the US Department of Justice.

Investing in private prisons

Research into who invests in the US private prison industry has revealed that, as at 31 March 2004, Corrections Corporation of America had 125 institutional investors; Cornell Companies Inc. had 64; GEO Group had 59; and Correctional Services Corporation 13. The full details are included in a recent paper by two Rutgers University academics who argue that their work “contributes to a critical understanding of prison privatisation by, among other things, tracking the flow of capital that supports the economic infrastructure vital for the expansion of corrections.” Set out below is an extract from the authors’ schedule of investors.

Private correctional firms and their institutional corporate stock holders as at 31 March 2004 (in order of ranking and shares held over 100,000)

Cornell Companies Inc

1. Fund Asset Management 1,415,100
2. Wellington Management Co, L.L.C. Boston, MA 1,319,100
3. Fleet Boston Corporation Boston, MA 971,700
4. Dimensional FD Advisors, Inc Santa Monica, CA 964,900
5. Barclays Bank PLC New York, NY; London 702,884
6. Jana Partners, L.L.C. 688,100
7. Caxton Associates, L.L.C. 644,00
8. AXA Financial, Inc. 543,200
9. Merrill Lynch Inv Managers New York, New York 460,300
10. Allianz Dresdner Asset Management 428,208
11. Royce & Associates, L.L.C 419,700
12. Pioneer Investment Mgmt Inc 368,925
13. Fidelity Management & Research Boston, MA 318,500
14. State Street Corporation 219,902
15. Boston Partner Asset Mgmt, L.L.C 181,280
16. Wyper Partner L.L.C. 142,000
17. Mellon Bank NA 141,077
18. Bank One Corporation Columbus, OH 129,040
19. Paradigm Asset Mgmt Co, Inc 125,500
20. Northern Trust Corporation 116,173
21. LSV Asset Management 114,800

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)

1. Fidelity Management & Research 3,346,624
2. Legg Mason Inc 1,704,308
3. Barclays Bank PLC 956,992
4. Courage Capital Mgmt, LLC 912,805
5. Capital Research & Mgmt Co 825,000
6. William Blair & Co, L.L.C. 739,570
7. AW Asset Management, L.L.C 720,600
8. Loeb Arbitrage Mgmt Inc 660,000
9. Vanguard Group, Inc. 645,903
10. State Street Corporation 625,932
11. Merrill Lynch Inv. Managers 621,215
12. Mellon Bank NA 535,733
13. Engemann Asset Management 473,335
14. J. & W. Seligman & Co., Inc. 438,462
15. Newsouth Capital Mgmt Inc. 401,843
16. Fund Asset Management 321,536
17. Dimensional FD Advisors, Inc 321,000
18. Northern Trust Corporation 297,742
19. Allianz Dresdner Asset Mgmt 265,301
20. College Retire Equities 255,774
21. Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz L. 249,000
22. Principal Financial Group Inc 227,262
23. Bamco Inc 212,766
24. S & E Partners L.P. 196,600
25. Aim Management Group, Inc. 178,250
26. SunTrust Banks Inc 159,175
27. Citigroup Inc 154,735
28. Oppenheimerfunds, Inc. 151,600
29. Delta Asset Mgmt L.L.C. (TN) 150,688
30. Southern Fiduciary Group Inc 148,413
31. Fuller & Thaler Asset Mgmt Inc 124,700
32. Renaissance Technologies Corporation 122,000
33. Cobalt Capital Mgmt, Inc. 115,000
34. New York Life Inv Mgmt Secs 107,925
35. James Investment Research Inc 101,890

Correctional Services Corporation (CSC)

1. Dimensional Fund Advisors 775,348
2. Benson Associates, L.L.C. 712,925
3. Wells Fargo & (Northwest Corp) 678,125
4. Vanguard Group, Inc. 285,482
5. Legg Mason Inc 102,500

GEO Group Inc

1. Strong Capital Mgmt, Inc. 1,126,602
2. MSDW & Company 867,867
3. Fidelity Management & Research 840,800
4. Barclays Bank PLC 767,975
5. Royce & Associates, L.L.C. 571,900
6. Heartland Advisors Inc. 505,400
7. High Rock Capital L.L.C. 254,700
8. Dimensional Fund Advisors, Inc 254,400
9. Vanguard Group, Inc. 225,973
10. Northern Trust Corporation 116,773

Source: Globalisation in the Sphere of Penality: Tracking the Expansion of Private Prisons Around the World by Michael Welch and Fatiniyah Turner, Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, New Jersey. Paper presented at Prisons and Penal Policy: International Perspectives, City University, London, 23-25 June 2004. Email: Michael Welch, retrowelch@aol.com

* Pirate Capital, owner of 6.1 per cent of Cornell Companies Inc, has claimed that shareholders are being denied the opportunity to capitalise on a sale of the prison company. TheDeal.com reported on 13 July 2004 that Pirate considers “the refusal to explore the strategic sale of the company to be a breach by the board’s fiduciary duty to shareholders.” TheDeal.com also reported that Cornell’s failure to meet earnings expectations in recent years and a scandal involving millions of dollars in missing investor capital “also aroused ire.”

* In June 2004 Cornell completed a $60 million refinancing involving J.P.Morgan Securities Inc, Bank of America, Comerica Bank, South Trust Bank and US Bank.

* Heartland Advisors Inc (a GEO Group investor) and 12 company officials have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misrepresentation, mispricing and insider trading in two Heartland Group high yield bond funds. The SEC announced civil fraud charges on 11 December 2003, (www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-171.htm)

Heartland Institute - another ‘independent’ view

Yet another ‘independent’ think tank is contributing to the push for private prisons in the US (see PPRI # 62). The Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which describes itself as “an independent source of research and commentary”, recently published an article by Geoffrey F. Segal, the Reason Foundation’s director of privatisation and government reform (see PPRI # 62 & 50). In his article ‘states tap private prisons’ published by the Institute’s Budget & Tax News,1 July 2004, Segal wrote that “prison privatisation remains an attractive option for governors and state legislators seeking to control spending and balance budgets,” citing recent initiatives in California, Virginia, Colorado and Florida.

Heartland also runs PolicyBot “the largest collection of free-market research and commentary on the internet”. According to its website Heartland’s recent foundation donors include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Heritage Foundation (see PPRI #62) as well as the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation and hundreds of corporate donors including Heartland Capital Resources.

Private prisoner statistics

Half the prisoners in private facilities in the US were held for the federal system and three states as at 30 June 2003, according to recently published statistics.

Overall, private facilities held 6.5% of all state and federal prisoners compared with 6.2% as at mid-year 2002. In the first six months of 2003 the number of prisoners held in privately run facilities increased from 93,179 to 94,361, an increase of 1.3%.

The federal system (21,372), Texas (16,714), Oklahoma (5,573) and Tennessee (5,079) reported the largest number of privately held prisoners. New Mexico (44%), Alaska (29%), Wyoming and Montana (both 26%) were the states with the more than a quarter of their prisoners held privately. Overall, southern states averaged 8.1% of their prisoners held privately, followed by western states (6.1%), the midwest (2.2%) and northeast (1.8%). In the northeast, seven of the nine states had no privately held prisoners while New Jersey accounted for 9.1% and Pennsylvania 1.4%. In the midwest, six of the 12 states had no privately held prisoners.

Overall figures have increased since 31 December 2000 when there were 90,542 privately held prisoners, comprising 75,018 state and 15,524 federal prisoners respectively.
Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, US Department of Justice, May 2004, www.ojp.usdoj.gov

GEO’s international perspective

Florida-based GEO Group Inc is planning on extending its international operations (see PPRI #60 & 57).

According to the company’s 2003 annual report “Although our UK presence was curtailed by the sale of our 50 per cent interest in our joint venture, Premier Custodial Group Ltd, we have moved aggressively to identify business opportunities that will re-establish our regional presence. The government has dictated that all new corrections centres be designed, constructed, managed and financed by the private sector. This has given rise to a host of new opportunities for our company which we expect to pursue in the future. We will also continue to assess prospects in other international markets to partner with government agencies seeing cost-effective correctional management ... we expect a number of opportunities internationally over the next 12 to 18 months that could represent as many as 17,000 new beds.”

However, GEO’s first attempt to re-enter the UK market was thwarted when, earlier this year, Denmark’s Group 4 Falck turned down the company’s offer to buy its corrections business, GSL.

NEW ZEALAND

Law prevents private prisons

New Zealand’s parliament voted 62-53 in May 2004 to pass legislation that prevents future prison privatisation (see PPRI #62, 54, 51, 46, 38, 34, etc). The Labour, Green and Progressive parties voted for a clause in the Corrections Bill that prohibits GEO Group’s existing contract for the Auckland Central Remand Prison (ACRP) from being renewed when it expires in 2005 and requiring all prisons to be managed by the government. Opposition parties have argued that there is no justification for ACRP to be taken over by the state.

Meanwhile, a new group has been formed to lobby for greater private sector involvement in owning, building and operating New Zealand’s infrastructure and services. The New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development includes Macquarie Bank, construction firms Fulton Hogan and Stevenson and law firm Bell Gully and will advocate for public private partnerships and for changes to laws that stand in their way.

* Chubb New Zealand has won a five year contract to provide escort and custodial supervision services to prisoners appearing in court. The contract covers the Northland and Auckland region and commenced on 1 July 2004.

AUSTRALIA

Group 4 spends so Port Philip penalties waived

Group 4 has solved its recent problems at Port Philip Prison in Victoria, according to the state’s minister for corrections, Andre Haermeyer (see PPRI # 61, 59, 57, 56, 51-49, 45, 42, 37-34 & 28-15). In response to questions from parliament’s public accounts and estimate committee he said:

“There was a default notice issued against Port Philip Prison on 22 October last year and that related to a number of what we considered serious security deficiencies in the way the prison was being run. On 7 and 8 May targeted searches of that prison revealed a small handgun loaded with five bullets, mobile phones and a significant quantity of drugs and a digital camera. There was a subsequent security breach on 15 August where a sick prisoner was unable to be located for more than seven hours and that constituted a failure to provide the movement and control or prisoners which the prison is required to provide for.

We thought that these failures to comply were in breach of the prisons management specifications and our advice was to issue a default notice under the terms of the contract that we are being required to demand of that prison, that it delivers us a cure plan. That cure plan has to outline the rectification tasks that the prison will undertake. That cure plan was delivered to me on 26 November 2003. It contained 31 tasks which were broken down into 118 different work commitments which were to be completed by 29 February 2004. These had to be agreed to by the correctional services commissioner and I approved that plan.

On 11 March I received advice from the correctional services inspectorate that 113 of the 118 work commitments had been fully implemented and the other five were being satisfactorily progressed. On 17 March I advised the commissioner that I considered the default plan had been satisfactorily remedied.

I might note that the prison did go a bit further than we actually required of them in the cure plan, and it has resulted in a significant capital expenditure by the contractor to the order of about half a million [Australian] dollars which involves a major refurbishment of the prison entry reception area and the vehicle sally port. It also includes enhanced security features including increased security check point screening and scanning equipment. So we think they have significantly lifted their game as a result of the implementation of that cure plan and I so am satisfied with the action they have taken in response to those deficiencies.

I do not think there were any financial implications for the state. The state has the capacity to withhold performance fees or to financially penalise the contractor but given the expenditure that the contractor invested over and above what we actually required of them in the cure plan it was recommended that the option to impose a financial penalty be waived since they had already made a significant financial sacrifice over and above what we would have imposed on them in terms of the financial penalty.”

Extra payments

A$10 million in additional payments have been made to the prison operators Group 4 and GEO after their respective prison service agreements were renegotiated. Mr Haermeyer told the committee: “… the contractor has a 20 year build, own operate contract. At the end of the first four years there is a renegotiation of the prison services agreement which is simply the process by which the operator runs the prison. We required, as a result of the deficiencies that had occurred in those prisons - and we negotiated this with both the remaining two private operators - we noted that there were some significant deficiencies in the way that they were required to operate under their prison services agreement and there were things like a tolerance for escapes. I think one or both of them were allowed one escape a year. There was a tolerance for deaths in custody. These sorts of things we just will not cop.

So we negotiated a much tighter prison service agreement which also went to some more qualitative issues in terms of good prison management. As a result of that we have a better prison services agreement that has a cost. It has also been pointed out to me that we do have an increased flow-through of prisoners through Port Philip prison which increases their cost. We have also expanded the capacity of both these prisons.” Extracts from Government of Victoria, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, Inquiry into 2004-05 budget estimates, Melbourne, 21 May 2004.

UNITED KINGDOM

30% staff turnover at Premier prison

Lowdham Grange prison, Nottingham, opened in February 1998 and is run by Premier Prisons (see PPRI #36). The chief inspector of prisons inspected in March 2004 and described the prison as “safe and well managed”. However, on average 100 prisoners - one fifth of the population - did not have enough purposeful activity. The prison had low staffing levels, inexperienced staff and a staff turnover of 30 per cent, making “meaningful personal contact [with prisoners] difficult.” The prison needs to review its management of race relations and foreign nationals and promote diversity. It also needs to change its policies towards anti-bullying, suicide and self harm.

The prison was first inspected in 1999 and a number of improvements were recommended. This latest inspection found that, since then, 39 of those had been achieved, 11 had been partially achieved and 18 not at all. The inspector listed 46 repeated and further recommendations for improvement. Report on An Unannounced Inspection of HMP Lowdham Grange, 1-3 March 2004, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, published June 2004.
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/justice/prisons/inspprisons/inspection.html

Archbishop opposes privatisation

The Church of England is the latest faith group to raise concerns about private prisons (see PPRI #56). Following a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Church’s General Synod voted on 11 July 2004 to accept a report calling for the use of prison as a last resort.

The Archbishop said that programmes of rehabilitation and education in the prison system are consistently frustrated by the abnormal mobility of the prison population as a direct consequence of overcrowding. “These programmes are frustrated and they are not likely to be helped by some of the ideas for further privatised involvement in this area.” He remarked that this was a “sensitive” matter and one “which Synod will want to keep in mind as they reflect on these issues.”

Contracts Update

Source: House of Lords Hansard, 17 May 2004, amended by PPRI.

Notes and updates:
Table is for England and Wales only. Scotland has one PFI prison, Kimarnock operated by Kilmarnock Prison Services Ltd, a subsidiary of Premier Custodial Group Ltd owned by Serco Group plc.
Also excludes prisoner escort and electronic monitoring contracts.
1& 2. Wolds and Doncaster are management-only contracts.
3. Opened in June 2004.
4. Due to open 2005.
5. From July 2004 Securicor is now Group 4 Securicor.
6. From July 2004 Group 4 Global Solutions’ prisons and detention centres business is owned by Falck A/S (Englefield and Electra Partners).
7. At press time Banco Santander of Spain was negotiating to acquire Abbey National.

SOUTH AFRICA

Next four prisons to be public?

The government of South Africa’s four new prisons could be traditionally procured and operated by the public sector (see PPRI #61, 58, 56, 54, 52, 51, 42, 38, 36, etc).

However, the department of corrections is under pressure from the treasury to use public private partnerships (PPPs). According to Siyabulela Mlombile, department of correctional service regional commissioner for Gauteng, the treasury’s PPP Unit issued veiled threats to withhold money for the new prisons unless public private partnerships were considered. Only a limited evaluation of the procurement options has taken place. However, a full feasibility study will be undertaken for the next phase of four prisons.

Speaking at a conference in London in June, Mr Mlombile also said that a major concern about the two existing private prisons was the 25 year contracts. “We would like a period of five, seven or ten years to allow for the benefit of continuous improvement,” he said. “We would have preferred a growing relationship rather than a marriage cast in stone.” Reducing the high cost of debt is a key aim of an attempt to review the contracts. Mr Mlombile said that, in future, accredited service providers from all sectors might be involved in delivering services to the corrections department.

* The Perekisano-Mmogo Consortium has a contract worth more than R13 million with the department of correctional services to carry out a feasibility study into the use of public private partnerships for new prisons. The consortium will also receive a further R7 million per prison (if applicable) related to PPP procurement.

*South Africa’s department of correctional services paid the companies operating the two private prisons a total of R411.79 million for the financial year 2002-2003, according to the department’s Annual Report, 1 April 2002-31 March 2003. R92.3 million was added back to the department’s baseline for the 2002/03 financial year. As part of the agreement with the national treasury, the department was required to shift this amount from its capital budget to personnel expenditure where expenditure had to be reduced to finance PPP prisons.

ISRAEL

Now private electronic monitoring

Israel’s electronic monitoring equipment suppliers hope to cash in on the government’s decision to implement a pilot programme to electronically tag 250 suspected or convicted offenders on bail or probation from January 2005. After a year the programme, to be operated by a private security firm, will be extended. The government is expected to announce the contractor in September 2004. A small scale experiment with electronic surveillance was carried out in Israel in 1993: it failed to improve on recidivism rates. Privatised electronic monitoring follows the government’s move towards private prisons (see PPRI #62, 60, 59, 56, 52, 45, etc).

GROUP 4's DEALS

Acquisition and disposal completed

Group 4 Falck has completed its acquisition of Securicor to form a new company, Group 4 Securicor, which will continue to operate Securicor’s correctional services business (see PPRI #62 & 60). On 12 July 2004 Group 4 also completed the disposal of its Global Solutions (GSL) division to private equity firms Englefield Capital and Electra Partners for £207 million.

Englefield and Electra each now own fifty per cent of Falck A/S which, as part of Group 4’s restructuring, became the Denmark-based holding company for GSL. Headquartered in the UK, GSL operates prisons, immigration detention and other custodial services in the UK, Australia and South Africa and has other businesses such as rescue and safety services.

The investment by GSL’s new owners has already paid off. On 18 June the UK’s home office announced that GSL UK Ltd had signed a 10 year contract to design, build and operate a new 750-place accommodation centre for asylum seekers at Bicester, Oxfordshire.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Prisons and Their Moral Performance, A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life, Alison Liebling assisted by Helen Arnold, Oxford University Press, 2004.
This book, in the Clarendon Studies in Criminology series, is a critical study of modern public sector reform. “The modernisation project, in which privatisation plays a significant role, is part of a search for rapid organisational progress, in which better, firmer, management aims to secure better, more efficient and more effective public services. This new reform ethic brought with it the new, but flawed, craft of performance monitoring and measurement.” Sections of the book are devoted to research from 2000-01 comparing privately managed Doncaster prison with four public sector prisons. “There are some positive characteristics of the public sector - the theta type core values- which matter. These values are broader more carefully balanced and they exist at a higher level than those values we found being practised at Doncaster, despite this establishment’s undeniably impressive achievements.” The authors “reject the ideological claim that private is better whilst hoping that the public sector might learn from both its successful and disastrous experiments with privatisation” and suggest that there are in their account “some implications for the public-private debate, as well as for the increasing use of imprisonment, to which privatisation is often thought to be logically connected.”

The Prison Industry: Carceral Expansion and Employment in US Counties, 1969-1994. Gregory Hooks, Clayton Mosher, Thomas Rotolo,Washington State University, and Linda Lobao, Ohio State University, Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 85, No.1, March 2004, www.blackwellpublishing.com
The authors of this study found no evidence that prison expansion has stimulated economic growth. In fact, they provide evidence that prison construction has impeded economic growth in rural counties that have been growing at a slow pace. They conclude that, despite sharp ideological and intellectual differences, the critics and the advocates of the prison construction boom share the assumption that prisons can contribute to local growth, especially in hard pressed local areas. “This belief flies in the face of mounting evidence that state and local initiatives rarely have a significant impact on growth; this belief is also contradicted by our analyses.” This study is the first comprehensive and longitudinal assessment of prison construction on local areas.

Force and Fraud: A Radically Coherent Criticism of Corrections As Industry, Michael Welch, Rutgers University, Contemporary Justice Review, 2003, Vol. (6 (3), Routledge.
This article “uses blunt language to describe and decipher formal responses to crime that have produced an increasing reliance on incarceration which, in the light of market forces, manifests as an economic engine…the corrections industry operates as a mechanism of social control predicated on generating revenue along with various ideological dividends for the state as well as private interests.”

Public risk for private gain? The public audit implications of risk transfer and private finance, Allyson Pollock and David Price, Public Health Policy Unit, School of Public Policy, University College London, UNISON, July 2004, www.unison.org.uk
“On the basis of our study of the National Audit Office inquiries [into operational PFI/PPP schemes] we show that the government’s claim that the higher costs of private finance are due to risk transfer is largely unevaluated for central government PFIs.” The report includes a very brief case study of the refinancing of Altcourse prison (see PPRI #36).

Globalisation and Private Prisons, Stephen Nathan, Howard League Magazine (HLM), Volume 22, Number 3, July 2004, www.howardleague.org
The article provides a snapshot of recent international developments noting that while early 1990s predictions for a global industry have not yet been achieved “the industry is growing and there appears to be no shortage of investors keen to capitalise on incarceration for profit.”

The Perils of Private Prisons by Stephen Nathan and Enver Solomon; and Who Delivers and Why it Matters by Richard Garside, Safer Society, Number 21, Summer 2004, NACRO, www.nacro.org.uk
Two of the articles in this issue of NACRO’s journal devoted to presenting arguments for and against the development of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) in England and Wales and the extension of competition into prison and probation services.

Paying the cost? Public Private Partnerships and the public service workforce, Sanjiv Sachdev, Catalyst, June 2004, www.catalystforum.org.uk
This paper concludes “government claims that the private sector can bring new innovations and efficiencies to public service delivery that are not at the expense of public service employees do not sit comfortably alongside the evidence that does exist as to the impact of PPPs” and that “there are serious grounds for concern that PFI/PPPs are contributing to greater income inequality, a deterioration in terms and conditions particularly among relatively low-paid staff, and may be setting future problems in store as a result of poor pension provision.” The report includes information about wages an conditions in private prisons in England and Wales.

Scottish Court Service, Sheriffdom of North Strathclyde, Inquiry Held Under the Fatal Accident and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976, Determination by William Seith Stanners Ireland, Sheriff of North Strathclyde at Kilmarnock following an inquiry held on 30 October 2003 and 11/12 February 2004 into the death of Raymond Talent. Published July 2004.
This report into the death of a prisoner at Premier Prisons-run Kilmarnock found “unexplained gaps in the medical records … that impeded the inquiry into the circumstances of the death and that the Scottish ministers and Premier … should, as far as practicable, ensure that all medical and nursing staff at HMP Kilmarnock are advised of the importance of meticulous record keeping …”

The Detention Industry, Background Briefing, ABC Radio National, 20 June 2004, www.abc.net/au/rn/talks/bbing
“Immigration detention is now a billion dollar business. It is closely linked to the private prison industry, otherwise known as the ‘corrections industrial complex’. In Australia, Europe and the United States a small number of multinational corporations are competing for government contracts to lock up asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. And some of the biggest banks and investment funds are lining up for a slice of the action.” This programme profiles recent developments.

Management of the Detention Centre Contracts - Part A, The Auditor General Audit Report No.54 2003-04, performance Audit, Australian National Audit Office, www.anao.gov.au
This is the report of an investigation into the federal government’s contract with Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) between February 1998 and February 2004. It found that the contract lacked a risk management strategy, management plan and clear roles and responsibilities. Ambiguous language defined the contract specifications. The points method used to calculate ACM’s performance fee was “an ineffective mechanism for sanctioning persistent below-standard delivery” (see PPRI #57-55, 52, 51, 49, 46-44 & 42-36).

ENDS

Prison Privatisation Report International
Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU)
Business School, University of Greenwich
Park Row, London SE10 9LS, England
Internet: www.psiru.org/justice
Email: ppri@dsl.pipex.com