The power of the corporate (private) prison industry and why Australia has the highest proportion of private prisons in the world

"Research to date on private prisons has found that they perform no better than publicly operated facilities, are not guaranteed to reduce correctional costs, and provide an incentive for increasing correctional and detention populations. Despite these repeated failings, many countries, including those facing serious problems in the quality and capabilities of their correctional systems, have followed the United States in adopting a flawed and shortsighted scheme." 

from International Growth Trends in Prison Privatization.

A Report by the Sentencing Project titled International Growth Trends in Prison Privatization shows that Australia has the highest proportion of prisoners in private (corporate) run prisons in the world. 

The table shows that the percentage of prisoners held in private prisons in Australia is 19%, compared to 17% in Scotland, 14% in England and Wales and 11% in New Zealand. (Given that the data used in the report is from 2011 it is highly likely that the proportion of prisoners in private prisons in Australia would be higher now in 2014)

Some Australian states, like Victoria, have a higher proportion of prisoners in private prisons. In Victoria nearly one third of prisoners are held in private prisons, giving it the highest level of prison privatization of any jurisdiction in the world.

The US has the highest number of prisoners held in private/corporate run prisons, but the percentage of prisoners in private prisons is 8%.

The population of people held in private prisons in Australia has increased 95% in the past 15 years. In that same period, the number of prisoners in state-run jails grew by 50 per cent and the total prison population increased by 57 per cent.

 The rapid and consistent increase in the number of prisoners over the last two decades, coupled with a 106% prison occupancy rate, creates an opportunity for private prison corporations to thrive.

Another reason for the growth in the numbers of detainees in corporate run prisons in Australia has been the enormous growth in the number of asylum seekers detained in immigration detention prisons run by Serco (on shore and Christmas Island) and Transfield (Naura and Manus Island).

What is happening in Australia is consistent with international trends. The report International Growth Trends in Prison Privatization by the Sentencing Project found that:

• At least 11 countries, spread across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand are engaged in some level of prison privatization.
• The private prison market outside the US is dominated by 3 corporations- Serco, G4S and Geo Group.
• Immigration detention has become a rapid growth market for the private prison corporations.
• The profit motive of private prison corporations often leads to inadequate services and unsafe conditions.

The private run prisons  are immensely powerful and profitable, with the corporations involved in running private prisons making increased profits across all jurisdictions in which they operate.

"The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

Even a pro-prison privatization advocate, such as Professor Richard Harding notes that the prison corporations such as GEO and Serco are more powerful than the governments they deal with. 

Private prison corporations have a vested interest in mass incarceration and policies that result in more people being imprisoned. As Paul Allizi writes:

The larger the prison population, the longer the sentences, the larger the payout under government contracts. The more prisoners, the more prisons, the more growth. Cheaper facilities and fewer services mean more profit. These inescapable relationships are the source of the potential conflicts of interest. The incentives of private prison companies can easily become opposed to the aims of the humane containment and rehabilitation of prisoners- the very purpose of corrective services".

In Australia three private corporations- Serco, G4S and Geo Group- run private prisons in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. These three corporations are global giants, in a powerful billion dollar industry, and they also run prisons in the US, UK, Europe, Israel and South Africa.

Corporate run prisons in Australia are:

• Immigration Detention Centres, onshore and offshore (Serco and Transfield)
• Acacia Prison Western Australia (Serco)
• Wandoo Young Adult Facility, Western Australia (Serco)
• Junee Correctional Centre, NSW (Geo Group)
• Parklea Correctional Centre, NSW (Geo Group)
• Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, Queensland (Geo Group)
• Borallan Correctional Centre, Queensland (Serco)
• Southern Queensland Correctional Centre (Serco)
• Mt Gambier Prison, South Australia (G4S)
• Fulham Correctional Centre, Victoria (Geo Group)
• Port Phillip Prison, Victoria (G4S).

G4S and Serco also run prisoner transport services, including prisoner transport services in Victoria (G4S) and Western Australian prisoner transport and court security services in WA (Serco).

Even though Australia has the highest proportion of prisoners in private (corporate) run prisons in the world, State Governments plan to radically expand the number of private prisons, despite serious questions about the evidence upon which prison privatization is based. (see the paper Private Prisons in Australia: Our 20 year Trial in the online journal Right Now: Human Rights in Australia and the recent report The Cost of Private Prisons by the US based group In the Public Interest).

The report The Cost of Private Prisons concludes:

"The private prison industry claims that governments can save money by privatizing prisons, but what does the evidence actually indicate? To maximize returns for their investors, for-profit prison companies have perverse incentives to cut costs in vital areas such as security personnel, medical care, and programming, threatening the health and safety of prisoners and staff. Yet research and the recent experiences of states show that the promised cost savings often fail to materialize for government agencies that contract with for-profit prison companies. Furthermore, proponents of prison privatization may employ questionable methodology when calculating costs of private facilities. This includes finding ways to hide the costs of private prisons, ensuring that increased costs are not apparent until after the initial contract is signed, and using inflated public prison costs during comparisons.

In Australia, prison privatization has become a powerful ideological tool, used by State Governments to promote and advance their particular policy agendas. Prison privatization is also a controversial policy agenda, with the result that Governments impose it secretly, without serious public discussion and debate.

In Queensland, the Newman Government has established a secret Task Force to develop a plan to hand over all Queensland's prisons to the corporate sector. This would make Queensland the only jurisdiction in the world where all prisons are run by private corporations.

In NSW, the O'Farrell Government commissioned a secret report by the pro- privatization consulting form KPMG which recommended that 11 NSW prisons should be privatized.

In Western Australia, the Barnett Government and Joe Francis, the Minister responsible for Prisons have used  the privatization of more prisons, including juvenile prisons  in Western Australia  as a threat to impose their prison and corrective services reform agenda. 

Gerry Georgatos on Serco's prisoner transport contract

Gerry Georgatos is a West Australian journalist who combines investigative reporting with a powerful commitment  to campaigning on social justice and human rights issues.

Gerry is  a Western Australian based reporter for the National Indigenous Times for whom he writes important stories about Indigenous and social justice issues that few other journalists are willing to cover.

Gerry is also the Principal and Convener of the Human Rights Alliance through which he has initiated  and led groundbreaking social justice campaigns in WA. Gerry is also a Phd researcher  on Aboriginal Deaths in custody.

It is this combination of investigative journalism, social and political research and social justice campaigning that has resulted in Gerry exposing injustices ignored by the mainstream media and politicians, including the illegal imprisonment of Indonesian youths in adult prisons in WA, Police violence inflicted on a young Aboriginal man in Albany and the appalling state of Aboriginal homelessness in the Kimberley region.

As well as the National Indigenous Gerry's articles also appear in many other places including Indy Media, Indy Media Brisbane, Green Left Weekly and the Donnybrook-Bridgetown Mail.

Gerry's article below is about the decision by the UK multinational corporation Serco and the WA Department of Corrective Services to deny Aboriginal prisoners access to prisoner transport to attend family funerals. 

The article will appear in the National Indigenous Times this week. 

Gerry Georgatos on Aboriginal Funeral outrage

The National Indigenous Times has been contacted by two sources during the last couple of weeks, one within the Department of Corrective Services (DCS) Western Australia and another within SERCO, that Aboriginal inmates will no longer be transported to funerals. Instead they may be left with the option of paying their respects to loved ones by either viewing a recorded or where possible live screening of the funeral and the procession while alone in a prison wing room. This has been slammed as inhumane, and culturally inappopriate by most Aboriginal Elders.

Both sources said that this initiative was flagged allegedly due to SERCO's reluctance to transport prisoners to funerals. The multinational which has the contract to much of the State's prisoner transport, and manages Acacia Prison, on the outskirts of Perth, and the lucrative Immigration Detention Centre network Australia-wide, is allegedly reluctant to provide compulsory funeral attendances for Aboriginal inmates - it has been alleged that SERCO management claimed high prison officer risk issues at funerals and also allegedly cost benefit issues. SERCO is one of the world's wealthiest companies.

UWA law student and Nyoongar rights activist Marianne Mackay the former chairperson of the Deaths in Custody WA contacted the National Indigenous Times a few days ago to confirm that she had also been advised that an Aboriginal prisoner was refused transport to a funeral last Friday. "This is a first, it doesn't happen that one of our people is not allowed to attend a funeral. Apparently SERCO refused to transport him and this has stunned us considering how everybody knows how important it is for our people to attend funerals. It attacks our cultural integrity."

SERCO communications spokesman Tim Evans said, “The issue was discussed at length at WA Estimates hearing in July when the decision was made by the Department of Corrections.” There was no other comment.

The WA Estimates did not discuss some of the allegations raised by the whistleblowers. Questions will be tabled next week in State Parliament in response to the claims by whistleblowers in this article.

At the WA Estimates the WA Commissioner of Corrective Services Ian Johnson said the State Government had asked him to make a two per cent saving in their budget. “We had spent around $1.1 million to transport people to funerals. We certainly recognise there is an importance in doing that. There is significance, obviously, for all people to attend funerals, but particularly for Indigenous people in terms of their family relationships. However, how long is a piece of string? It becomes a situation where you cannot control the expenditure in continuing to provide the opportunity for people to attend funerals,” said Commissioner Johnson.

He said that Skpye had been successfully trialled for prisoners who could not be transported to funerals. Aboriginal rights advocates described this as an outrage for their people.

Another Nyoongar rights activist, Iva Jackson-Hayward has responded with a call for the State Government to ensure that the DCS and SERCO ensure Aboriginal inmates do not have their cultural rights eroded. "The DCS and SERCO are dutibound to protect the rights of our people. Aboriginal women and men in prison cannot break their customary duty to attend funerals. It's outrageous what is happening, and it's a human rights abuse. This is all about money, and SERCO trying to make more of it by abusing the rights of our people. It is the Government's duty to pull SERCO into line."

Ms Mackay said the Inspector of Custodial Services, Neil Morgan was contacted on Friday.

The WA Prison Officers Union (WAPOU) said the State Government should scrap SERCO's prisoner transport contract. WAPOU Secretary John Welch made this call following another whistleblower's leaking of serious allegations.

The whistleblower said SERCO transported prisoners to wrong prisons, was late in bringing prisoners to their Court appearances, transported seriously ill prisoners in prison vans instead of ambulances. It was only a couple of months ago a prisoner who had open-heart surgery was returned to the prison in a van instead of an ambulance and arrived with serious injuries which the DCS tried to play down however CCTV footage proved otherwise.

All three whistleblowers said SERCO was not turning up to transport Aboriginal prisoners to family funerals, and that SERCO made no effort to account for its failure.

Mr Welch said SERCO's failure to ensure contracted prisoner transports gave rise to stress and tensions in prisons.

"These latest allegations are so serious that the Barnett Government should cancel SERCO's contract and bring these services back for the Department of Corrective Services to run so that we can be confident the community is being kept safe."

Australia has one of the world's worst prison suicide rates, with privately run prisons, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, enduring proportionately more deaths in custody than Government run prisons.

Other serious allegations were made by the whisteblowers to the National Indigenous Times and we will follow these through.

Poetry of profound suffering, human survival and deep humanity

The first time I heard Nigerian poet Chris Abani was on Phillip Adams's Late Night Live Program in 2009. I vividly remember that interview for the shocking story that Chris Abani told about his imprisonment and torture by the Nigerian authorities.

Chris Abani is a Nigerian born poet, author and musician who wrote his first novel aged 16. In 1985, aged 18, he was imprisoned by the Nigerian government who believed his novel was a blueprint for a coup. Over the next 6 years Abani was imprisoned many times by the Nigerian authorities for his writings and political activism. In 1991 he went into exile in London, and eventually the USA, where he now lives.

Abani takes the experiences and trauma of his time spent as a political prisoner and turns it into powerful poetry, fiction and prose.

His book of poetry Kalakuta Republic is a collection of poems about the brutality and hardship of prison life (and release from prison) under the tyranny of a military dictatorship (which was propped up by Western governments and oil companies such as Shell) . These are poems of immense sadness and profound humanity. They tell of  horrific torture, cruelty and evil perpetrated by prison guards and Nigerian authorities. But they also capture moments of shared humanity and compassion shown by guards and fellow prisoners despite terrible circumstances. The title of the book comes from the Nigerian prison where Abani was imprisoned.

Buffalo Soldier

In the last week before
he died, John James would cry softly
every night.

His father, colonel on the wrong side
absconded to Chad across the border-
they came looking for him.

Finding only John James and his mother,
they took him, ransom for his father's head;
but he never came- maybe he never knew.

Unable to lose face, they held JJ anyway;
one extra hand for graveyard duty- and practise
for artists seeking the perfect torture.

This child's only crimes were an overactive
imagination, a belief in the unseen- a father who
haunted a despot.

He sucked through eager eyes tales from Jeremiah;
goblins, ghosts, cannibals and parrllel words. Doesn't
he recognise the plots from the comics he gave him?

In the week before
he died John James's laughter fell
mauve gossamer blossoms from a tree shaking.


Passover

Before he was transferred
again
for fraternising with the prisoners,

Lt Emile Elejegba came to
see me
in my cell at night.

Wrinkling his nose against the
smell
and trying hard not to cry.

he handed me a slim worn
volume
with the picture of a smiling white girl
on its cover.The Diary of Anne Frank.

'This might help"he said gently.
'I hear
Nelson Mandela read it on Robbens Island'

In the morning he was gone as
I turned
the first page and began to read.

poems copyright Chris Abani

Partial justice in the wild west: Charges laid against those responsible for Mr Ward's death

"I think it is long time coming. It is good for my sons and me, for the Ward families, my in-laws, the Elders in the community, friends and colleagues of my husband – everyone who knew my husband........It will help me and my family deal with the pain a little better.”
The wife of Aboriginal elder Mr Ward

For the widow and family of Aboriginal elder Mr Ward there was some good news this week with the announcement that Worksafe (WA's industrial safety watchdog) will lay charges against those responsible for the death of Mr Ward. Not criminal charges mind you, but charges under Occupational health and safety law.

Three years after Mr Ward died in the back of a searing prison van in the Goldfields, the WA Department of Corrective Services, G4S (the corporation responsible for prison transport) and two of its drivers will finally be charged under the WA Occupational Health and Safety Act. Up to now the only person charged in relation to Mr Ward's death was an Aboriginal man arrested for refusing to follow Police instructions at a public protest against the WA Government's failure to pursue criminal charges against those responsible for Mr Ward's death.

Mr Ward was a distinguished Aboriginal elder and community leader from Warburton in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands who died from heatstroke in January 2008 in the back of a prison van during a 6 hour trip from Laverton to Kalgoorlie to face drink driving charges. Mr Ward was wrongfully in custody at the time as a result of systemic failures in the justice process and was forced to ensure a 6 hour trip under extreme conditions in the back of a prison van run by G4S. The air conditioning in the back of the van was not working and the two drivers failed to check on Mr Ward during the trip. By the time they arrived in Kalgoorlie Mr Ward was dead, essentially cooked to death.

An Inquiry by the WA Coroner into the death concluded that the Department of Corrective Services, G4S and the two drivers had all contributed to the death. However, the WA Government's Director of Public Prosecution decided not to pursue criminal charges against those responsible.

Worksafe has announced that it will lay charges against the Department of Corrective Services for failing to ensure Mr Ward was not exposed to hazards, against G4S for causing Mr Ward's death because of their failure to maintain their van and the two drivers are charged for contributing to Mr Ward's death. All charges carry a penalty of a fine.

If years of cruelty, ineptness, insensitivity and neglect by successive Labor and Liberal Governments on this matter was not enough, the current Attorney General Christian Porter tried to politicize the Worksafe announcement by claiming that he had fixed all the problems in the system and that it was Labor who was responsible, as they were in Government at the time of Mr Ward's death.

It is a deeply insensitive and inappropriate comment. It was his Government that took over 2 years to pay compensation to the Ward family and who refused to pursue criminal charges against any of those responsible. It was Attorney General Porter who rewarded G4S with a continuation of the prison transport contract, primarily because their contract could only be terminated if there were 2 deaths in their care in a 12 month period.

The Attorney General has made all sorts of claims and promises that the justice system and private contractors such as G4S have learned the lessons of the Ward case, a claim that is palpably false. Over the last 12 months there have been numerous deaths in custody including Dion Woods and Grantley Winmar in 2010, the March 2010 incident involving an Aboriginal man who nearly died in the back of a prison van on its way to Casurina prison, and the recent events surrounding the death of an Aboriginal man in custody in the Kalgoorlie lock up (my earlier piece about that death is here). There has also been the shocking incidents involving the use of tasers against Kevin Spratt.