"Where's the Evidence?"-Penal Reform Trust's Challenge to McDowell on Prison Plan

by Rick Lines, Executive Director - Irish Penal Reform Trust Wed Nov 12, 2003 14:42 info at penal-reform dot ie Swanbrook House, Bloomfield Avenue, Dublin 4 01-668-0072

Anyone wanting a starting point for information on the international experience of prison privatisation (costs, efficiency, human rights, prison conditions) please see our website at http://www.penal-reform.ie/privatisation.htm

For the most comprehensive information avialable, please see the website of Prison Privatisation Report International at http://www.psiru.org/justice/index.asp

by Ciaran Mc Kenna Tue Nov 11, 2003 16:57

Declan, plenty of problems with privatisation generally but just with prison privatisation specifically two points:

First, private prisons are businesses just like widget making, mobile phones and any other business you can think of. Therefore as businesses they need to increase revenue year-on-year to keep the profits rolling. How do they do that - in a word, more prisoners, lots more prisoners. How do you get more prisoners - harsher laws, longer sentences, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" ie life sentences after three convictions, criminalise selected communities to ensure a steady supply of the "raw materials" for private prison. Unlike the US there is no large, indentifiable minority who can be targetted but I'm sure McDowell and co. have a good idea what kind of person they'd fill private prisons with.

Secondly, private prison operators, following standard capitalist logic, ruthlessly cut costs, by imposing longer hours on prison officers, shortening the training period for officers, increasing lock-up periods, cut backing on educational services etc. As I said private prisons are a business, and for them to make a profit they need to pulverise huge numbers of human beings. I don't see what's efficient about that.

In the US, where private prisons are growing like a cancer, the prison population has exploded, in part to feed the privatised jails. In the UK private prisons, for instance, hold thousands of asylum-seekers who have committed no offences, and they make a tidy penny doing so - regardless of the cost in human lives and misery.

They might be "efficient" but they're also a symptom of a fucked-up society and the fact that Mc Dowell is considering them is a bad omen in my book.

Lockdown America by Christian Parenti and Nick Cohen's articles in The Observer deal extensively with the evils of private prisons.

by ligrando Tue Nov 11, 2003 16:55

>but wouldn't privatising the prison service make it more efficient and therefore cheaper for the rest of us?...

give some realistic arguments for that

>what's the problem with privatisation?



there's a long list.
but let's pretend we have memories of reality and not just economics classes or PD meetings.
here's just two.

privatise the rail in the UK...
they cut costs.
they closed lines, they cut corners on safety.
trains crashed. cheaper is not always best.

it also makes a legal mess of people's rights and the reponsibilities for safety.

by iosaf Tue Nov 11, 2003 16:06

the problems with privitisation of such sectors of the state's responsibility is the ensuing application of market forces and globalised corporative thinking to such areas of the state's responsibility.

In short and simple jargon free english:
Prisons are part of the equation of law enforcement through retribution and systematic criminalisation and temporary suspension of rights be they civil, human, urban or individual.
Inmates of prisons are sent there by the courts which are part of the state apparata after being processed generally by the police who are also part of the state apparata. Should a privatised entity control the prison then it accepts responsibility for caring for preparing citizens for their re-introduction to society. Responsibility for "rehabilitation" is thus passed from the apparata which constitutionally must uphold those responsibilities for the state to a non-state body. Invariably privatised prison services are extra-state bodies, and as such, are multi-national corporative in nature. If we begin to transfer the responsiblities of our state and as most think "our society" for "Rehabilitation"/"Retribution"/"penology" to extra-state entities then why not transfer our health services, beurocracy, social services, pensions, and the whole ragged bag of low profit making non business non competitive concerns of the state?
IT would indeed be cheaper for us all.
But in whose hands shall remand applications be in?
shall probation officers work for short term contracts?
IN whose hands will the ultimate responsibilities for health issues within the prisons be?
in those of the Oireachtas and it's comitees or a multi-national corporation's board of directors?

Ireland's prisoner's are exactly that:
Ireland's prisoners.

They may be political, they may be criminal, they are all generally held to be innocent, and some are undoubtedly monsters, but so far they have not been in any sense rationalised for a quarter report as a "human resource liability".

Privitisation of prison services in the USA where over 15% of the adult male population is imprisoned, has led to deals being cut between extra state security entities and those minimum wage endentured employers. Prisoners who leave the privatised prison service continue endentured in a restricted employment market which to my eyes at least holds more in common with Fascist corporativism of the 1930s than any liberal or humanist value supposedly internalised in the "modern" Ireland.

I haven't even touced upon the arguments against privatisation of prison or penological services, hopefully someone else will...

by declan Tue Nov 11, 2003 15:26

but wouldn't privatising the prison service make it more efficient and therefore cheaper for the rest of us?... what's the problem with privatisation?

by Degenerate Tue Nov 11, 2003 15:19

I think he is only to bring his proposals to a cabinet meeting today.
It would seem that he is attempting to flex his muscles and show the 'workers in uniform' that he is a tough nasty bastard.

by fubar Tue Nov 11, 2003 15:05

It was announced yesterday that He's going to close 2, privatise 2 (cork & kildare?), Privatise prison to Court services and introduce new requirments on wannabe screws. This is in response to his latest deadline (last friday) for the screws to toe the line.

What it takes legaly for the mad one to do this i dont know. I know there was going to be something done about it today up in the dail or whatever its called. He cant just go up and say "this is it" and it is, can he?

by Spelvis Tue Nov 11, 2003 14:35

You may find this interesting, and I feel that it is something which must be opposed, but the privatisation of the Irish Prison services seems to be beginning(Continuing) by stealth..

I just saw that the minister for justice is using the ongoing debate over the "overtime for prision guards" to push a more sinister agenda.

In fact he plans to take Loughan House in Cavan, and Shelton Abbey in Wicklow out of the hands of the prision service. (This could mean they will be placed in the hands of the guards, but no commitment has been made.) However, as part of this plan he intends to privatise the prison escort system. Which would seem to indicate his real intent.

This is quite worrying and I feel it must be stopped before it snowballs into something we can't control..

Just thought some of you may be interested.

Any ideas?