Private Prisons: a success or failure? (Photo: Web)

While the concept of private prisons is alien to Indians and many others, countries such the US and UK have them in place. The UK, known for the most privatized prison system in Europe is spreading their presence to resolve issues such as overcrowding and higher costs.

That leaves Carol Pounder, the mother of Adam Rickwood, unhappy as she was assured that her son was safe when she last saw him in a privately-run Secure Training Centre. She was completely unaware of the events which were about to unfold in the coming days. The death of her 14-year old son, who had hung himself with a shoelace, could have been prevented had the staff in the private prison, run by the multinational firm Serco, been careful.

The boy committed suicide a day after the method of restraint used on him involving a “karate-chop” blow to the nose, which would have been extremely painful and resulted in bleeding. He was the youngest child to die in prison custody in the UK in the recent history. Critics have raised questions whether staff members are being adequately trained at these prisons to deal with vulnerable people like Rickwood.

The loss of Rickwood is a reminder that private prisons are a catalogue of failures, according to his mother. There are many concerns raised about their safety records as Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which provides a way of funding public sector buildings, pay their officers half of what the state sector does, which means they tend to have fewer and less experienced warders. A survey commissioned by the Prison Service Pay Review Body in early 2003 found that average pay for prison officers and senior officers is more than fifty percent in State prisons. According to Hansard, the House of Commons official report, five privately-run prisons have more than half its staff with less than 5 years of experience.

Private prisons, including the STCs “should be closed immediately or there will be more deaths,” said Pounder. “Most staff members don’t have the right qualifications or training to handle the most vulnerable kids in the society, and restraining isn’t the answer to discipline them.”

A report in 2003 by the National Audit Office, an independent organization that scrutinises public spending on behalf of the Parliament, has also pointed to a lack of experienced staff and a high staff turnover. As a result, it argued, the environment in private prisons is generally less safe than in publicly-run prisons, where prison officers on average have more experience.

That is not the only issue. There are also doubts about the effectiveness of their rehabilitation efforts. Prisoners in private jails are more likely to be involved in serious assaults and more likely to re-offend once they have been released, according to Prison Reform Trust　(PRT), a charity campaigning for penal reforms.

Currently, there are eleven prisons run privately in the UK, which was initiated by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the early 90s. According to PRT, Serco PLC subsidiary, Premier Custodial Group, is the largest provider of private prisons, operating four prisons. Falck AS, formerly owned by Group 4, which is the holding company for Global Solutions Limited, and Kalyx, which is owned by the Paris based multi-national corporation Sodexho, operate three each. Securicor Justice Services, now owned by Group 4 Securicor, operates one.

They now house 10 percent of the total population in prisons and may take a bigger piece of the pie in the coming years as the government has put a lid on its budget for the Prison Service. The Home Office earlier this year told the Prison Service to find savings of 80 million pounds for each financial year between 2008 and 2011 from an annual budget of 2 billion pounds.

The scale of the savings demanded was astonishing to many, at a time when the government is grappling with an overcrowding crisis in a struggle to house more than 80,000 inmates. The fact that no money has been allocated to run the new prisons indicates a clear message: there will be more privately-run prisons in England and Wales.

“The government is going more in the direction of introducing more private prisons,” said the Guardian prison correspondent, Eric Allison. “All the new upcoming prisons will most likely be privately run.” The UK already has the most privatised prison system in Europe, and although there are not as many private jails as in the United States the proportion of prisoners in private prisons is higher, according to the Prison Reform Trust.

STCs are also privately run, at a cost to the public of 172,000 pounds per place per year. Pounder’s grievance is that at that price, seven times the cost of the most expensive public school, the public should expect that those in legal responsibility of some of society’s most vulnerable juveniles do better than resort to violence every time a child fails to obey their order.

According to her, it became clear at Adam’s inquest that staff and management of the centres have persistently broken the rules on restraint. The government now intends allowing them to stay within the law when using force but the STC staff claim restraint for non-compliance is necessary for them to maintain “good order and discipline.”

Despite several deaths, like Rickwood, at private prisons, the government’s explanation remains that private-run prisons are cost effective. In contrast, some critics say that such claims by the government that PFI projects are cost-effective and save public money are “unfounded.”

According to researchers from Edinburgh University, the government’s claims that nearly 88 percent of PFI projects were delivered on time and within budget as opposed to 70 percent of public projects, which were delivered late with 73 percent costing more than expected, were “either non-existent or false.”

The government currently signs contracts for 25 years with companies to run prisons. According to March 2007 issue of a UK magazine, Public:Private Finance, new prisons will “almost certainly” be privately financed.

That worries Catherine Hayes about the effect of private prisons on criminal justice policy. Hayes, a caseworker at the Inquest, an independent organization that helps provide legal advice services to bereaved families on the inquest system, condemns private prisons as “morally repugnant.”

“It is wrong for anyone to be making money from punishment of offenders,” she said. It raises a question why would these companies want to reform and rehabilitate prisoners if they are making sterling out of it, she added.
Juliet Lyon, the director of the PRT, demands to see a shrinking market for private prisons even though good business practice demands a growing market. “A vested interest will develop in having a sizable prison population,” she said.

As the government wants to escape the current crisis faced by prisons in the UK, the introduction of private prisons is starting to influence policy. There are moves to further deregulate private prisons, by removing the government-appointed controllers that monitor them. Two more prisons are being established in the UK, which are likely to be privately run.

This is happening despite a BBC undercover report on Rye Hill jail, located in the West Midlands region of England, broadcast in April this year. The programme showed widespread intimidation of staff members, and prisoners, who had easy access to drugs and mobile phones. Chief Inspector Owers made critical comments about the private prison in her inspection reports in 2003 and 2005 about the safety of the place.

Another report by PRT acknowledges that “private sector innovation has, in some cases, improved regimes but it raises questions about efficiency savings and the need for private companies to achieve economies of scale. Unpublished figures show that the performance of private prisons against key targets is mixed with many failing to meet targets on serious assaults, drugs and purposeful activity. Whilst there are some private prisons that are performing very well others are experiencing difficulties. Overall the pay and conditions for staff in private prisons are inferior to those in public prisons and staff turnover is higher.”

At a time when prison population is close to being at a record high, the report says: “there is a need to question a system where companies have a vested interest in keeping the prison population as high as possible.”

Still, some say that introducing competition in the operation of prisons has helped improve performance in PFI jails. A report by National Audit Office commends the PFI prisons, saying they can provide examples of good practice for publicly funded jails, although it admits there is still room for improvement.
Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, agreed and pointed out that many of the private prisons are among the best run in the system, which is also reflected in Owers’ reports.

“While morally it is not right to have private prisons, but treatment and conditions are a lot better,” said Ramsbotham, who had visited a few of these prisons for inspections.

Critics like Stephen Nathan, editor of Prison Privatisation Report International, can not agree that there can be any good in a society by having private prisons. He thinks the idea of privately run prisons is flawed.

“Rye Hill is not one off, the problems are systemic,” said Nathan. The pursuit of profit is incompatible with rehabilitating prisoners and providing adequate working conditions for staff. “It is a wrong policy and the prisons do not solve the problem of overcrowding,” he said, adding the government cannot continue to ignore the evidence.

Between, 1998 and 2006, companies such as Global Solutions, Serco and G4S were each fined about 1.3 million pounds, 605,380 pounds and 970,741pounds respectively　for poor performances as measured in terms of the contractual performance management system, according to the Hansard published on February 27, 2007.

India has been criticised by human-rights activists for the issues of overcrowding, lack of basic facilities in the prisons, and it is high time the government addressed some of these issues now. Still, one must hope that it never follows the path that the UK has adopted which seems ethically wrong. The severe conditions in the prisons should prompt the government to pump more money into public services such as prisons rather than allowing private companies to get money out of the victims.