By Catherine Gow
In discussions and debates, the politics of privatisation are generally seen to be those of economic rationalism and the introduction of conservative financial values. We have been sucked into arguing against privatisation on the terms of economic rationalists — i.e. the economic efficiency of providing services (or not providing services), rather than debating the role of government to govern for all and not just those with millions of dollars. Human rights and justice seem to have lost their place in the arguments.
Similarly, parts of the left, some political groups, Trades Hall and churches have narrowed the argument on privatisation to what they define as the "winnable" issues — the major public utilities: gas, water and electricity.
At the same time the state is bolstering the conditions of economic rationalism — perhaps economic terrorism is a more descriptive term — by reducing the rights to voice dissent, challenge the government and access information. Freedom of information legislation has been amended to increase fees and reduce access on the grounds of "commercial confidentiality".
In Victoria, legislation has been passed to outlaw appeals to the Supreme Court; local councils have been sacked and stacked with sympathetic followers of economic rationalism; community services have been savagely cut. The Equal Opportunity Board has been reviewed and Moira Rayner sacked. They have reduced the power of the director of public prosecutions, and are attempting to do the same to the Magistrates and Coroners Court.
They have introduced special amendments that deny access and compensation through the court system for anyone affected by the Grand Prix at Albert Park, and have overruled local planning processes in the shire of Melton, with the introduction of the "Special Use Prison Zone".
In conjunction with this, the police force has been massively increased, new weapons and tactics introduced and accountability destroyed. Harsher penalties are being handed out to those who speak out, who act against this government's agenda, who dare to resist.
Human rights
Privatisation is more than just the three issues of gas, water and electricity. It is an attack on civil and human rights and community welfare. The efforts currently expended in fighting the privatisation of utilities should be extended and focused on all issues of privatisation, including prisons and prisoners. The people who are in our prisons are part of our community. We can not let the walls of prisons divide us from our sisters and brothers.
The government's privatisation plans in corrections are far-reaching and frightening, unmatched anywhere in the world. They are proposing the privatisation of at least three prisons in Victoria, privatising a new 330-bed remand centre and police cells.
They have already privatised prisoner transport, hospital security for prisoners at St Vincents Hospital and the cells under the new Magistrates Court — all this with hardly a murmur from many political and community groups.
The reality of Victoria's first private prison is currently on our door step. Construction of the first private women's prison in Australia and the first in the world outside of the United States is due to start in weeks. This is to be a 200-bed private women's prison owned, operated and managed by Corrections Corporation of Australia, built by John Holland and financed by Westpac.
"As citizens we have given the government the exclusive power to do particular, highly important and often difficult things, on the understanding that they use these powers for the communal good. Examples of these special powers include the power to raise and maintain an army, the exclusive power to print money, and a legal monopoly over the use of force. When a suspect of an act of crime is arrested, the state is using its legal monopoly over the use of force ... By definition, imprisonment deprives a person of her or his liberty — it is an act of force." (John Ernst, "Why we should say no! to private prisons", speech at Deer Park public forum on the "Ravenhall" private prison proposal, Deer Park, June 1994.)
Punishing people through imprisonment is the most serious action that we as a society can take — it is the supreme expression of the state's power. Privatising prisons, prison management and prison force, giving away to multinational commercial corporations the power to coerce, to hold people against their will and to administer punishment and brutality, is to commodify people's lives. To sell people for profit is an act of slavery.
Bad record
It was the poor who were sent to this big prison 200 years ago, and it is where the poor and those dispossessed by invasion still reside today. And for a country that claims not to have the death penalty, 799 women and men have died in custody since 1980!
Victoria has had the lowest incarceration rate in Australia. The Kennett government has relentlessly pursued imprisonment as its best sentencing option. It has increased sentences, created indefinite sentences, created new imprisonable offences, made bail more difficult and now is opening up the prison gates to fine defaulters.
This creates ideal conditions for companies to profit from the infliction of the ongoing pain and punishment of imprisonment.
The private sector was involved when Australia was invaded by the English and appropriated as its new prison. Private involvement in punishment attracted a reputation for cruelty, neglect and exploitation through slave labour. Of the thousand convicts privately transported and imprisoned in the second fleet, more than half died either during the trip or upon arrival due to hunger and bad treatment.
The current private prison corporations argue that the abuses of the past will not be repeated and that proper monitoring and accountability procedures by the state would prevent this. What has happened in the US, England and Australia seriously challenges this claim.
Recently, floating prisons have reappeared. In New York harbour there are now two five-storey prison ships for 800 prisoners built by private contractors, and another 800-bed one is to come. In 1993 the British government gave itself the power to designate any floating structure as a prison without regard to the building regulations and standards.
Those in favour of private prisons argue that they are more cost effective and accountable. But an OECD report prepared in the United States states that private management of prisons is extremely risky because it is virtually impossible to write an enforceable contract (Harry. S. Havens, "Private Sector Ownership and Operation of Prisons: an overview of the U.S. experience").
On the cost question, Paul Moyle said there are only two ways to cut costs without sacrificing quality: using fewer resources or getting them cheaper. What we know is that private prisons both employ fewer people and pay those people less than the state (Paul Moyle, Private Prisons and Police: Recent Australian trends, Pluto Press, Australia, 1994).
The Victorian public is being denied access to the realities of private prisons and the government tendering specifications through the cloak of "commercial confidentiality". But the motivation driving private sector involvement in prisons is obvious — it's about profit, not the provision of service nor some humanitarian mission.
There is a clear conflict of interest between the desire of a community to reduce crime and the desire of private prison companies to increase their profits through greater imprisonment.
Concerns
The first private prison opened in Australia in 1990. In just four years, we now have the highest percentage of prisoners in private prisons in the world — 9%. With Kennett's plans for Victoria, we will give 40% of our male prisoners and 80% of women prisoners to overseas profit-motivated corporations by 1997, compared with 2% in the United States, where the private prison experiment started and is now failing. Private prisons/private security is the fastest growing industry in Australia after tourism.
Major concerns with private prisons arise from:
- the state trying to avoid responsibility for the running of the criminal justice system;
- contracts not being open to scrutiny, not subject to FOI because of issues of "commercial confidentiality";
- insufficient accountability to us and to parliament (In England the House of Commons could not even find out the number of chaplains in the private prisons!);
- private prison corporations cutting staff costs by installing electronic equipment and cutting services to prisoners;
- evidence of overseas private prison companies attempting to interfere with government policy on law and order issues.
Silencing dissent
One of the biggest hurdles prisoners and prison activists have is the silencing that occurs around prison issues. The Victorian government has now made it virtually impossible for media to have access to prisons except "to improve the public image of the department" (Victorian Office of Corrections, Director General's Rules 3.17, Conditions for Media Contact).
Not only is government restricting information and therefore debate on these huge private contracts, but private prison operators are gagging freedom of speech. Australian private prison corporations have issued writs and threats of defamation action against people who dare to speak of the prisons and the corporations that run them ("Private Jail Critics Face Legal Threats", the Australian, June 17, 1994).
It is not good enough to perpetuate the myths and lies about imprisonment, to belittle the pain and brutality of prisons and private prisons.
In particular I get sick to death of some people's "jokes" that the Bonds and Elliotts of the world may end up in a private prison of which they are major share holders. These people are not representative of the people who are imprisoned and who will suffer at the hands of profit-making corporations. Those who suffer are the poor, the disenfranchised, women and Aborigines.
In opposition to privatisation, people seem to forget the plight of prisoners, whose lives will soon be in the hands of private companies motivated by profits. It is time to act against private prisons and to remember that the women and men who are being sold are often unable to resist, are unable to be heard and are often ignored. Therefore it is our responsibility to put politics back into the privatisation debate. [Catherine Gow is an activist in the People's Justice Alliance. This is an edited version of a talk presented at the Campaigning for Democratic Socialism Conference in Melbourne in April; Catherine Gow has not had the opportunity to check the editing.]