The first Parliamentary inquiry on the privatisation of prisons was held this week on Monday 23 February 2009. Witnesses that provided evidence were representatives of the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services, the Public Service Association, Justice Action, and the University of New South Wales.

Terms of reference

The purpose of the inquiry is to inquire into and report on the privatisation of prisons and prison-related services in New South Wales including:

1. The impact of privatisation on:

a) Public safety and rates of escape
b) The incidence of assault on inmates and staff
c) Disciplinary breaches
d) Overcrowding
e) Prisoner classification levels
f) Rehabilitation programmes, mental health support services and recidivism rates
g) Staffing levels and employee conditions

2. The comparative economic costs of operating public and private facilities and the impact of privatisation on publicly managed prisons

3. Accountability mechanisms available in private prisons

4. Future plans to privatise prisons or prison services in New South Wales

5. The use and effectiveness of private security guards in perimeter security of prisons

6. The experience of privatisation of prisons and prison services in other Australian and overseas jurisdictions

A brief timeline

New South Wales was the second state in Australia, after Queensland, to introduce private prisons. On November 1990, then Minister for Corrective Services introduced the Prisons (Contract Management) Amendment Bill to provide for the management of a prison to be undertaken by the private sector on a contract basis. In his second reading speech, the Minister said:

“The legislation will be the beginning of a new era in correctional administration and prison management that will break new ground in this State. The contracting out…will provide optimal conditions for modern, humane, rehabilitative, and cost effective forms of management…In general terms, the contracting out of prison management must be seen as an opportunity to introduce innovation and reduce some of the pressures on a difficult area of public administration.”

The Bill was passed and the Greiner government engaged the private sector to design, build and operate the Junee Correctional Centre, which opened in 1993. Junee remains the only privately run prison in NSW (Roth 2004: 1).

August 2008 – The NSW Government announced wide-ranging reforms of the State’s prison system, after overtime payments hit $43 million a year more than the budgeted $20 million. The Attorney General and Justice Minister, The Hon. John Hatzistergos MLC, said Treasury was looking at privatising Sydney’s Parklea and the Hunter’s Cessnock correctional centres as part of the overhaul.

29 October 2008 – Around 1,000 NSW prison officers closed Macquarie Street to protest against the government’s plans.

11 November 2008 – The NSW Government announced the Mini Budget decision to privatise Parklea and Cessnock in order to save more than $42 million over the next four years. The Way Forward Reform Package will save $1 million this financial year, $9 million the following and then $32.2 million over the following two years.

4 February 2009 – More than 100 prison officers have walked off the job at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail calling for an end to privatise NSW prisons.

23 February – The first public hearing of the inquiry into the privatisation of prisons was held in Parliament.

25 February 2009 – At least 200 officers at Goulburn Correctional Centre walked off the job today for three hours to protest against the privatisation plans.

The plans to privatise Cessnock and Parklea prisons is now the responsibility of new Corrective Services Minister, The Hon. John Robertson MLC, who vigorously opposed the privatisation of electricity assets last year when he was Secretary of Unions NSW. More industrial action at the State’s jails is planned as prison officers continue to protest against the State Government privatising the industry.

New South Wales Prisons

In 2007, about 17 percent of the overall prison population of Australia is held in a private facility. In a 2006 report of the Auditor General to Parliament, it was reported that New South Wales has adopted incarceration policies that have led to a prison population that in 2004-05 was about 10 percent above the national average. In June 2006, New South Wales held the largest number of prisoners in Australia, with approximately 9,800 sentenced and unsentenced people incarcerated (Andrew and Cahill 2007: 3-4).

Arguments for and against privately operated prisons

Critics and supporters of privatisation would cite the following reasons to support their arguments. Arguments for:

1. The private sector is more efficient and innovative and will operate cheaper and better prisons.
2. Privatisation will be a catalyst for reform.
3. Privatisation will strengthen accountability.
4. There is nothing wrong in principle with contracting out prison management.
5. The private sector’s profit motive does not make it less trustworthy as prison manager.
6. The profit motive will not conflict with doing justice and can actually coincide it.
7. Private prison operators will not cut costs at the expense of standards.
8. Private prison operators will not make decisions that increase the length of an inmate’s stay.

Arguments against:

1. Private sector will not be more efficient or innovative and will operate worse prisons.
2. Privatisation will not result in reform and it could even hinder reform.
3. Privatisation will weaken accountability.
4. Imprisonment is an essential government function that should not be delegated.
5. It is wrong to place prisons in hands of private sector which, rather than being motivated to do good, is motivated by profits.
6. The profit motive will conflict with doing justice.
7. Private prison operators will cut costs at the expense of standards.
8. Private prison operators will make decisions that increase the length of an inmate’s stay.
9. It is immoral for profits to be made from imprisonment.
10. Private prison companies will form a powerful lobby for high-imprisonment policies (Roth 2004: 35).

Senior bureaucrats from the NSW Department of Corrective Services were represented by: Ron Woodham, Commissioner; Ian Russell McLean, Deputy Commissioner; Gerry Schipp, Deputy Commissioner; and Luke Grant, Assistant Commissioner.

According to the Commissioner of Corrective Services, the main reason for privatising Parklea and Cessnock is to “adopt work practices, technology and staffing structures that enable them to achieve effectiveness without compromising the effectiveness of the safety of correctional services” (Hansard 2009: 2). The wide-ranging reforms discussed in the inquiry are part of The Way Forward workplace reform package which outlined the following:

• Establish a centralised rostering unit
• Market test the outsourcing management of operation of two existing correctional centres
• Market test the outsourcing of certain functions of the department’s non-core operations (for example: boom gates, perimeter security and escorts)
• Finalise and implement new correctional centre operational statements
• Close certain correctional centres and reopen with the new Way Forward staffing levels and operational strategies
• Implement an absenteeism policy linked to overtime, management and operational statements
• Introduce casual employment

Union officials from the Public Service Association were represented by: Mssrs. Stewart Little, Steve Turner, and Matthew Bindley. Union officials argue that the privatisation agenda was never part of The Way Forward reform. They argue that the problem of massive overtime costs would not exist if enough full-time staff were employed. At the moment, casual officers are being employed to reduce overtime levels. Employing casuals into full-time positions would reduce overtime levels even further.

They claim that the crux of the problem is due to the State’s correctional facilities being understaffed with the prison population increasing from 6,800 inmates to more than 10,000. Parklea prison has a ratio of 242 staff to 823 inmates (Hansard 2009: 33).

In terms of the favouritism of rosters, the unions have testified that Parklea prison use a system of overtime equalisation and a computer generates of who is next to be called for overtime. The person who rightfully should be called next for overtime is on top of the list.

The union officials also raised the contribution of State prisons to the local economy and in decreasing unemployment levels in the region such as Cessnock. The unions fear that the privatisation of prisons would result in increased job losses during a time of economic depression affecting not just prison officials, their families and local communities. Privatisation would see a reduction in the number of mental health and education and training programs as well as health services available to reduce recidivism.

The contracting out of the Court Escort Security Unit and the perimeter security of prisons as well as the employment of casuals poses serious risks not just for prison officers and inmates but the community at large. The management of a maximum-security facility presents highly specialised challenges that require constant vigilance and a level of expertise that can only be applied through years of training and practical experience. Perimeter security is the frontline defence to entering a correctional centre. Under legislation, prison officers have the power to keep unwanted persons out.

Mr Brett Collins and Mr Michael Poynder represented the rights of prisoners from Justice Action, a prison advocacy group. Justice Action made clear that for the first time in New South Wales, prison officers and prisoners are in complete agreement: no to privatisation. Their main concern lies in the erosion of a prisoner’s well being (in particular mental health) when prisons are privatised. The cuts in rehabilitation programs will tremendously impact on how prisoners would assimilate back into the community.

The genuine interest of the corporate model is to have more offenders staying in prisons for a longer period of duration. This does not serve the best interests of the community nor does it serve the individual who is serving the sentence. In NSW, 43.7 percent of all prisoners, when released, commit crimes again within two years. That is a 43.7 percent rate of recidivism (Hansard 2009: 41).

According to Justice Action, there is no convincing evidence that management based on the profit motive improves prison systems or makes them more enlightened, humaned, reformative, or a less expensive option than Government-run prisons.

This is supported by evidence provided to the Public Accounts Committee’s 2005 Inquiry by the NSW Department of Corrective Services entitled, “The Value for Money from New South Wales Correctional Centres”, which suggests that the modern-government run centres are cheaper per prisoner than is Junee. Further examples from interstate and overseas show that where big corporations run jails, standards suffer, staff numbers are reduced, and rehabilitation services cut.

Leading international expert Stephen Nathan has said “Privatising prisons requires more people in the criminal justice system for longer and is squarely at odds with the public good.” In the United Kingdom, ten of the eleven private prisons were in the bottom quarter of the performance register of all UK prisons and showed they are consistently worse than their publicly run equivalents. On the domestic front, the Victorian Government resumed public control of the Metro Women’s Correctional Centre in 2000 after widespread drug use, deaths in custody, poor training, and cover-ups were exposed by the Armytage Inquiry (Community Justice Coalition 2009: 2).

Justice Action higlighted that most prisoners are young, semi-literate and innumerate. The inadequate provision of remedial education services is a lost opportunity for inmates to upgrade their skills. Instead they become institutionalised and dependent rather than developing a capacity to support themselves and their families, and to make a contributuion to society on their release.

Moreover, women prisoners, in most cases mothers of dependent children, are growing at the fastest rate. They argue that this is destructive of family ties and may lead to further anti-social behaviour by children who are institutionalised and deprived of family relationships.

Emeritus Professor Mark Aronson from The University of New South Wales provided several suggestions not from an ideological but a legal perspective. Professor Aronson recommended the following:

1. If the government goes ahead with prison privatisation, then it should engage in a reasonably open debate with all stakeholders as to the terms of possible terms of the contracting regime to be adopted (terms relating to overall objectives, key performance indicators, securities against financial failure, and other risk factors.

2. The principal contracting regime should require regular independent reviews to measure performance against the contractual performance standards. Treasury forecasts of the costs and savings to be achieved should be open, and information should be collected and be made publicly available at regular intervals.

3. Legislation needs to make clear that the civil rights of prisoners and their existing rights of appeal and judicial review should remain unaffected by any move to privatisation of prison services. For the purposes of the civil rights, the government should remain the defendant of last resort if the employer of the private sector staff should fall financially (Aronson 2009: 2-3).

As Christians, we have a moral obligation to take a stand on this important issue which affects the lives of prison officers and their families, and prisoners and their families. As Christians, we have deep reservations about the privatisation of prisons. Put simply, it is immoral for profits to be made from imprisonment and it is repugnant that profits can be made from the infliction of punishment.

The NSW Government has promoted the privatisation of prisons as a cost saving exercice. Each election, major political parties promise their electorates to get tough on crime. What we have before us is not just a debate about the privatisation of correctional facilities but politicians must see this is as an opportunity to get to the root of the problem: to reduce recidivism, to reduce juvenile offenders, to rehabilitate and educate prisoners, to employ more full time and properly trained correctional officers, to reduce the bureaucracy of the Department of Corrective Services, and to implement a change of culture within the Department.

These are the serious and highly charged issues that confront us. All parties (politicians, legislators, bureaucrats, unions, victims, correctional officers and inmates, and the community) must participate in an informed debate on this contentious area of public policy and what, clearly, will be a challenge for all.

For further reading, go to http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2008/11/07/plans-to-privatise-our-prisons-another-agenda-same-spin/

References

• Andrew, J. and Cahill, D. (2007), Value for Money? Neo-liberalism and New South Wales Prisons, Working Paper Series 07/16, University of Wollongong
• Hansard (2009), General Purpose Standing Committee No. 3, Inquiry into the Privatisation of Prisons and Prison-Related Services, uncorrected proof, 23 February 2009
• Roth, L. (2004), Privatisation of Prisons, New South Wales Parliamentary Research Service
• Community Justice Coalition (2009), Newsletter, 16 January 2009

Thursday, 26th February, 2009, 6:15 pm | Articles