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South Korea	United Kingdom
United States	Recent Reports, Paper
Australia

 

Queensland rejects corporatisation

The Government of Queensland has announced that  existing contracts for private correctional facilities will be honoured  but they will not be automatically renewed.

Mr Tom Barton, the Minister for Police and Corrections , said on 9 February 1999 that the Government was “allowing existing private providers to continue, but putting a very strong road block in front of a process the previous Government put in place which would have effectively ensured that every prison was in private sector hands within a few years.”

The existing corporatised corrections system will  also be scrapped in favour of more direct Ministerial control. A new Department of Corrective Services will be established.

Legislation enabling these changes will be introduced later this year.

The Queensland Corrective Services Commission (QCSC) was set up in 1988 and Queensland was the first Australian state to contract out prison management. Corrections Corporation of Australia has run Borallon Correctional Centre since 1990. Wackenhut has run the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre  since 1992.

In April 1997, the QCSC was administratively split into purchaser and provider organisations.

Peach review published 

The Government’s decisions on corporatisation go further than the recommendations contained in a recent review of the state’s corrections system by Frank Peach, a senior civil servant (see PPRI # 23).

The 144 page report, published in January 1999, recommended 58 changes, including reducing prison numbers and the associated social and economic costs by investigating the potential use of community corrections to prevent crime through rehabilitation.

On corporatisation and privatisation specifically, the report concluded that:

n the use of the purchaser/provider concept created inefficiencies, did not transfer risk, prompted job insecurity and the loss of inexperienced staff from the public sector, unbalanced social and economic priorities and created a fictitious profit;

n cost efficiencies across the system as a whole resulted from prisoners being doubled up in cells (in public and private facilities),  not from corporatisation;

n the level of oversight of privately run facilities was inadequate;

n existing contracts did not reflect best practice;

The report’s recommendations included:

n abolishing corporatisation while maintaining joint public and private sector provision;

n introducing output-based contracts as a matter of urgency;

n making tendering processes more transparent;

n allowing the Criminal Justice Commission to investigate allegations of misconduct by privately employed staff;

n abandoning universal market testing.

Corrections in the Balance: A Review of Corrective Services in Queensland, January 1999.    Queensland Corrective Service Review, Level 15, 215 Adelaide Street, Brisbane, Queensland 4000, Australia. Also available on the internet at: www.qcsc.qld.gov.au/globals/what’s new/corrserv.pdf

 

SOUTH KOREA  

Privatisation legal by 2000?

    South Korea’s Ministry of Justice is studying draft legislation which could enable the privatisation of the national prison system. A vote in the National Assembly  could take place by the end of 1999.

    The move has been brought about by a crisis. Both  crime and incarceration rates are increasing, and already some 70,000 prisoners are crammed into facilities with a capacity of only 56,000. A recent report by the Roman Catholic Church’s Human Rights Commission alleged that prisoners suffer poor  conditions, inadequate  medical care and systematic beatings.

    The Christian Council of Korea is one of the leading proponents of privatisation. It is hoping initially to operate a 300 bed facility with a Christian-based rehabilitation ethos.

    A Ministry of Justice official told the Far East Economic Review recently that “we don’t care who takes over, but it’s quite likely that the church groups will be among the first to take over prison management.”

 

UNITED STATES

CCA prisoners win $1.65m

    Prisoners from Washington DC who were sent to Corrections Corporation of America’s Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio on or before 19 October 1998 will share a $1.65m financial settlement  agreed by the company and the District of Columbia (see PPRI #18, 19, 23, 24 and 26).  The damages and the prisoners’ legal costs of $765,000 will have to be paid by CCA. The case began in August 1997 and is the first class action lawsuit brought by prisoners in a private prison in the US. The settlement was agreed in the US District Court, Akron, Ohio on 1 March 1999. It will become final if ratified in court on 20 April.

    Prisoners exposed to chemical agents when CCA staff used gas against them in an incident on 30 May 1997 will get $1,000 each; all close and maximum security prisoners will receive $300 and medium security prisoners will receive $500. Any prisoner who can prove real injury can reject these sums, complete a claim form and apply for a share of a $700,000 common fund.

    Families of prisoners who have died at the facility are proceeding with their own cases against  the company and the District of Columbia.

Problems from the beginning

The facility opened in May 1997. Within a short time,  three prisoners and one guard were stabbed. By August 1997, legal proceedings against CCA had begun. In July 1998, six prisoners escaped.

CCA held maximum security prisoners, although under the terms of the contract between the company and the  District of Columbia, only medium security prisoners should have been sent there.

Mr Alphonse Gerhardstein, the prisoners’ lawyer, told PPRI that the lawsuit had been brought “to make the prison safe, to secure adequate medical care and to institutionalise the reforms on a permanent basis”.

Under the terms of the settlement, an independent monitor employed by the City of Youngstown will oversee conditions at the prison. CCA will also have to follow stringent security, classification and medical standards or be fined for non-compliance.

An investigation by the FBI into abuse of prisoners at the facility is ongoing.

n Two recently published reports heavily criticised the prison: one by the Ohio Corrections Institution Inspection Committee in October 1998 (see PPRI #25) and the other in December 1998 commissioned by the US Attorney General (see PPRI #26).

 

Battle lines drawn in DC

A coalition of community and environmental groups is fighting a plan by CCA to build a 1,280 bed prison on parkland in Washington DC’s poorest district, Ward 8.

The coalition is demanding “schools not jails” and an alternative economic strategy for the area that does not rely on prisons. 

CCA is bidding for two Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBoP) contracts for a total of 2,200 beds and wants to house low security prisoners in the new facility.

Originally, the FBoP wanted to house all 2,200 prisoners in one private facility. But the agency amended the contract proposal as a result of “several serious incidents in various privately operated correctional facilities. These incidents have raised public safety concerns around the nation.”

One major political difficulty that the campaigners face is that Washington DC’s criminal justice system is run by the federal government. In 1997 Congress  mandated that DC’s prisoners must be held privately. At least 2,000 prisoners must be transferred by 31 December 1999 while 51 per cent of all DC prisoners have to be in private facilities by 2003.

Another is that, in recent years, some local politicians have received campaign donations from Joseph S. Johnson, Jr and his company National Corrections and Rehabilitation Corporation. Johnson is also a director of CCA (see PPRI #13 and 20).

Even the land that CCA wants to use is controversial. In 1997, Congress ordered the National Park Service to exchange the 42 acre site in south west Washington for land that CCA owned elsewhere in DC. Last November, hundreds of people opposed to the land being rezoned for prison use disrupted a DC Zoning Commission meeting about the issue.

A rally and a march against the prison plan took place on 27 February to build  opposition for when the Zoning Commission considers CCA’s proposal on 15April 1999.

Contact: Mr Steve Donkin, Ward 8 Coalition Against The Prison, 1708 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20001. Tel & Fax: ++1 202 986 9438. Email:sdonkin@smart.net

n A company whose hospital power unit provides heat and hot water to a CCA-run facility in Washington DC is claiming that the prison company owes it $1.522m for more than a year’s  utilities. Public Benefit Corp owns DC General Hospital which supplies CCA’s Correctional Treatment Facility. CCA has a contract from the DC government to manage the Facility. On 29 January 1999, Public Benefit Corp wrote to the DC City Council, the Mayor, the Control Board and CCA claiming that CCA had ignored numerous requests for payment. The company has  threatened to cut off the supply and instigate legal proceedings unless payment is received. CCA disputes the amount of the debt.

n Last year, the DC government waived fines of $1m levied against CCA for inadequate conditions at the Correctional Treatment Facility (see PPRI # 13).

n CCA has offered former DC mayor Mr Marion Barry a job giving motivational talks to prisoners about drugs. Barry, a former drug addict, was instrumental in implementing DC’s prison privatisation policy (see PPRI #1, 6 and 9)

 

CCA restructures

Following the merger of Corrections Corporation of America and Prison Realty Trust Corporation, the company is now known as Prison Realty Corporation (PRC).

It has three sub-companies  all doing business as CCA: Correctional Management Services Corp. Inc; Prison Management Services Inc; and Juvenile and Jail Facility Management Services Inc. 

It is still the largest private prison operator in the US. As at 2 March 1999, the prison management companies had contracts for 79 facilities with a total design capacity of 68,647 beds, of which 67 facilities with a capacity of 50,005 were in operation. Facilities are managed under the CCA name in 22 US states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, Australia and the UK. PRC actually owns 43 facilities in the US and one in the UK.

The restructuring allows the company to take advantage of federal tax laws and to increase its access to finance for expansion. PRC plans to “add facilities that are [company] owned and government managed to the menu of available services.”

n During a recent internet discussion about CCA’s merger and competition from other companies, one shareholder noted that: “CCA’s net [profit] margins in a typical management-only contract wherein CCA did not own the prison was 12 per cent. If CCA owned the prison but government (unionised) officers managed it, net margins were 16 per cent. If, however, CCA owned the facility and managed it, net margins widened to 40 per cent. Net margins on expansion portions to company owned and managed facilities ran upwards of 60 per cent” (See http://biz.yahoo.com/n/c/cca.html).

 

Colorado fails youngsters

    Colorado’s Division of Youth Corrections failed to carry out quarterly inspections on 53 of its 57 contractors in a 15 month period in 1997‑98, an audit has revealed. Over the same period, auditors found 38 suicide attempts, 39 allegations of child abuse, 62 escapes, 95 assaults and 16 sexual assaults. All of these incidents were supposed to trigger immediate inspections but did not.

    The audit also found that:

n when Youth Corrections did inspect facilities and uncover serious problems, it failed to make sure the contractors fixed them;

n there was “no rational basis” for the huge fees it pays to private contractors and that education and treatment programmes were often inadequate;

n although Colorado has nearly doubled the number of children placed in correctional facilities in the past five years - all privately run - it did not hire inspectors to keep track of them;

n thirty out of 107 files checked showed no evidence that the department’s client managers had any contact with new prisoners  during the time when they were being tested and treatment programmes were being set;

n client managers also failed to find out if prisoners  were receiving their  prescribed treatment, failed to ask if they were safe, and failed to meet with them alone so staff of the private facility could not intimidate them.

    The audit also found serious problems at the Glen Mills school in Pennsylvania, where 45 Colorado youths are placed. State officials have used the school as a model for Colorado's new 500‑bed prison in Aurora. Glen Mills’s recidivism rate is 46 per cent, the second‑highest of all Colorado private contractors.

 

CSC youngsters riot

    Armed detainees rioted and took seven staff hostage for 14 hours at the Bayamon Juvenile Detention Center at San Juan, Puerto Rico on 23 February 1999.  The facility is run by Correctional Services Corporation (CSC, see PPRI # 3,14, 21, 24 and 26) and holds young offenders aged between 14 and 20 years old. Some 48 detainees took control of four buildings, set fire to mattresses, destroyed security cameras and damaged other property.

    At least ten detainees and seven staff were hurt before the rioters surrendered to police. The surrender was negotiated after staff agreed to move some detainees to another prison and discuss complaints about medical services and recreational facilities.

    A spokesperson for the Florida-based company said that the riot had left the buildings “pretty destroyed”.

n The proposed merger of CSC and Youth Services International Inc will be voted on by both sets of shareholders on 30 March 1999 (see PPRI #24).

 

AUSTRALIA

Western Australia chooses CCA

    Corrections Corporation of Australia (CCA) has been chosen by the Government of Western Australia as the preferred bidder to finance, design, build and run the new 750 bed Wooroloo South prison (see PPRI #25 and 26). The Opposition Labor Party is still campaigning against privatisation and citing CCA’s recent problems in Ohio (see above) as cause for concern. But Mr Terry Lawson, the company’s Australian managing director claims that linking the US and Australian operations is unfair. “They [CCA in the US] do not have any day to day or month to month or year to year operational involvement,” he said.

 

Another death at Port Phillip

    A tenth prisoner has died at Group 4's Port Phillip Prison near Melbourne, Victoria (see PPRI # 15-26). Andrew Finch died of a suspected heroin overdose on 13 February 1999. The Federation of Community Legal Centres has questioned the veracity of the prison’s random drug testing  practices.

 

Overcrowding sparks incident

     Prisoners objecting to overcrowding at Corrections Corporation of Australia’s Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre held a sit-in  and sprayed staff with water on 24 February 1999. There are 152 prisoners in the facility with a capacity of 125.

n A number of prisoners at the Australasian Correctional Management (Wackenhut)-run Fulham Correctional Centre were taken to hospital in February 1999 after being injured during violent  incidents over a three day period. Victoria Police are investigating the incidents.

 

Victoria wins Fiji contract

    Victoria’s public correctional enterprise, CORE, has won a contract to provide counselling, conflict management and suicide management services to the Fiji Prison Service.

 

 

UNITED KINGDOM

Wackenhut pays up

    Wackenhut (UK) Ltd had paid the Prison Service £221,038 by 11 March 1999 following the termination of its industrial services contract at HM Prison Coldingley (see PPRI #23, 25, 26 and 27).

“Work is continuing to ascertain other sums due ... and the Prison Service is considering claims made by the company. The payment of all monies identified as being owed by Wackenhut ... will be rigorously pursued”  said a Government Minister in a reply to a Parliamentary Question (Hansard, 11 March 1999).

 

UKDS staff avoid charges

     Seven UK Detention Services Ltd (UKDS) staff suspended for their involvement in the unlawful death of black prisoner Alton Manning in December 1995 will not face criminal charges.

The staff, employed at HM Prison Blakenhurst in the West Midlands, have been suspended since March 1998 (see PPRI # 17 and 19). They will now face a Prison Service inquiry into their conduct.

 

 

RECENT REPORTS AND PAPERS

 

 

Strange Bedfellows: CA’s Political Connections and What You Won’t Read In CCA’s Annual Report, by Alex Friedmann, PCINB,3193-A  Parthenon Avenue, Nashville, TN 37203. Both of these papers have been updated  to December 1998. Friedmann also produces Private Corrections Industry News Bulletin (see PPRI # 25).

 

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation: The Stories They Won’t Tell You, Corrections USA (CUSA), PO Box 394, Newton, NH 03858. This briefing paper updated to January 1999, based largely on US press cuttings.

 

HM Prison Altcourse, Board of Visitors First Annual Report, June 1998. The Clerk to the BoV, HM Prison Altcourse, Higher Lane, Fazakerley, Liverpool L9 7AG, England. The Board’s first report on this prison financed, designed, built and run by Group 4.

 

HM Prison Blakenhurst, report on an unannounced inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP), 5-7 October 1998, published February 1999 by the Home Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London, SW1H 9AT, England. This is the second HMCIP report about the prison run by UK Detention Services Ltd.

 

Quinquennial Review of Prison Service, Prior Options Report and Evaluation of Performance 1992-93 to 1997-98, both published in February 1999 by the Home Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London, SW1H 9AT, England.  These reports examine the performance of the Prison Service in England and Wales since it became an executive agency on 1 April 1994. They also describe existing and potential private sector provision of services.