Sodexho Alliance, a multinational based in France, and its Australian
division, Sodexho Australia, won the contract to cater for several Olympic
venues Stadium Australia, the Olympic village (for sponsors and the media)
and the Sydney Opera House, the starting point for the triathlon. Sodexho
will also cater for the Paralympics. 
Both Sodexho Alliance and Sodexho Australia are involved in private prisons, through their connections to Corrections Corporation of America (CC-Am) and Corrections Corporation of Australia (CC-Aust).
The private prison industry is being vertically integrated. CC-Am and its subsidiaries are world leaders in the design, construction and operation of private prisons, while Sodexho Alliance and its subsidiaries provide services such as catering, grounds keeping, plant operations and maintenance, asset and materials management, and laundry services.
Private prisons
Founded in 1983, CC-Am pioneered the prisons-for-profits industry. Carefully selecting the most lucrative prison contracts, slashing labour costs and various other strategies caused the value of CC-Am's shares to soar from US$50 million in 1986 to more than US$3.5 billion in 1997. The company controls about half of the private prison industry in the US and worldwide.Sodexho sometimes tries to distance itself from CC-Am. "We own no prisons. We operate no prisons", said a spokesperson for Sodexho's US subsidiary, Sodexho Marriott Services.
However, Sodexho Alliance owns 48% of Sodexho Marriott Services and owns shares in CC-Am. Moreover, CC-Am and Sodexho Alliance openly acknowledge that they have been involved in an "international strategic alliance" since 1994 to pursue prison profiteering opportunities outside the US.
CC-Am and Sodexho Alliance each have 50% ownership of Corrections Corporation of Australia and UK Detention Services and plan to participate in future international joint ventures. CC-Am has also operated a private prison in Puerto Rico since 1995.
Australia was an obvious target for CC-Am and Sodexho the prison population here increased by 300% for women and 150% for men from 1976 to 1998. And where better to start than Queensland, with the fastest incarceration growth rate anywhere in the world?
CC-Aust was incorporated in Queensland in 1989 and has operated the Borallon medium security men's prison since 1990. Borallon was the first privately managed prison in Australia.
CC-Aust has also operated, since 1996, the first private women's prison in the world outside of the US and the first private prison in Victoria: the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre. It has also run prisoner transport and prisoner security in courts in Victoria since 1994.
In 1999, CC-Aust won a contract to build and operate a private prison in Western Australia, the first private prison in that state, and it has also won a contract to provide prisoner transport and certain security functions in WA.
From architectural design to management attitudes and public relations spin, many of the elements of Australia's private prisons are transplants from the US. In terms of the percentage of prisoners in private prisons, Australia is now the world "leader" by a country mile.
Deer Park
CC-Aust's most controversial prison is the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre, at Deer Park in outer Melbourne, which has been the focus of heated public debate since it opened in August 1996.Four months after it opened, warders lost control of a violent incident at the MWCC. Subsequent investigations found that the prison was operating without adequate fire protocols, that staff were unprepared for unrest and that details of the incident were kept out of the public eye for six months.
On March 30, 1997, Cheryl Black, an intellectually disabled prisoner on remand, was found dead in MWCC. The same year, CC-Aust was fined $100,000 because of problems with illicit drugs and the number of self-mutilations at MWCC.
On September 11, 1998, the day after the state government launched a review of prison safety, Paula Richardson, aged 23, was found hanging in her cell at MWCC.
Freedom of information applications for reports on the numbers of attempted suicides and incidents of self-mutilation at MWCC were refused on the basis of "commercial confidentiality". Hundreds of freedom of information applications have been lodged to gain information about CC-Aust's operations at MWCC, and hundreds have been rejected.
On March 18, 1999, the Age reported that the Victorian government had been singled out by the International Labour Organisation for forcing prisoners to work against their will for low pay, after a Gippsland company complained of being undercut by prison labour.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions said that women at MWCC who refused to work were moved to less desirable quarters. According to the People's Justice Alliance, the maximum wage a woman can earn if working full time at MWCC is $6.50 per day.
In October, Victoria's Security and Emergency Services Group used tear gas to control prisoners at MWCC.
A 1999 report by the Victorian auditor-general found that a number of serious deficiencies in the prisoner management process existed, requiring remedial action, and that the "limited" range of information dealing with the prison industry communicated to the Victorian parliament fell "far short of the level necessary to effectively meet its accountability obligations".
The auditor-general's report found that, as at February 28, 1999, the number of self-mutilations and attempted suicides at MWCC exceeded the "acceptable" limit specified in the Prison Services Agreement by 91%, and assaults on prisoners by other prisoners exceeded the "acceptable" limit by 20%.
According to a July 2000 report in the Sunday Age, five women were cut down after they attempted to hang themselves at MWCC in the lead-up to Christmas 1999. A suicide prevention training scheme for staff at MWCC was financed not by CC-Aust, but by a $75,000 state government grant.
In July 2000, the Victorian government asked CC-Aust to fix "widespread systemic" management failures at MWCC or risk penalties including termination of its contract. In the same month, the Victorian government issued a third "default of contract" notice to CC-Aust, following security and contract breaches.
Endemic problems
The problems at MWCC are not teething problems, as CC-Aust likes to portray them. Nor are the problems peculiar to MWCC. They are endemic to prisons in general and private prisons in particular.Privatisation has exacerbated problems in the prison system and introduced new problems. Private prisons frequently suffer from inadequate staffing levels, inadequate staff training and deunionisation policies, all of which exacerbate already high levels of violence and deaths.
Conflicts of interest abound in private prisons. For example, prison authorities hold considerable influence over the outcome of parole hearings, and private operators might find it profitable to extend a prisoner's sentence. Private operators might also find it profitable to downplay problems, so as to avoid penalty provisions stipulated in their contracts.
Prison privatisation also allows governments to avoid responsibility for the running of the criminal justice system, while allowing private companies to exert influence over law and order policies, through lobbying, donating to political parties or whipping up law and order hysteria through the media.
Any attempt by governments at genuine reform of the "law and order" system might also be thwarted or limited by contractual obligations to private prison operators. Public oversight is hampered by the greater-than-usual secrecy in private prisons, justified by "commercial confidentiality", and by frequent use of threats of defamation action against critics and the media.
The US-based group Prison Moratorium Project is working with allies in the student, labour and criminal justice reform movements to launch the "Not with our money" campaign against private prison companies, focusing on the link between CC-Am and Sodexho.
On April 4, students at 10 US campuses launched a national boycott against Sodexho, timed to coincide with the "National Student-Labor Day of Action". Seventeen students at the State University of New York's Albany campus were arrested after occupying the college president's office for five hours.
Sodexho already had a bad name at the campus after three students were infected with E. coli bacteria, forcing campus officials to close the cafeteria.
Since April, the campaign has spread to another 30 campuses. "Sodexho Marriott is clearly very worried; they phoned us even before we really did anything", says Kevin Pranis from the Prison Moratorium Project. "It's a very competitive environment in the food service business, and I think they've seen the potential for a student movement to really take off around bad corporate practices."
So far, the campaign against CC-Am/Sodexho has been limited to the US and Canada, but since both the problem (over-incarceration in general and the rapid expansion of private prisons worldwide) and the targets (Sodexho Alliance, which operates in 66 countries, and CC-Am and its subsidiaries) are multinational, the Prison Moratorium Project hopes to make links with activists around the world.
For more information, contact the Prison Moratorium Project, c/- DSA, 180 Varick St, 12th Floor, NY, NY 10014. Email Kevin Pranis: <kpranis@igc.org> or <nwomcampaign@hotmail.com> or visit the web site: <http://www.nomoreprisons.org>.
By Jim Green