By Pip Hinman
Soon, 50% of all prisoners in Victoria will be in private prisons, according to Shelley Burchfield, a community lawyer at the Coburg-Brunswick Legal Centre.
In June, the Victorian government announced that it would most likely award the consortium Australasian Correctional Services the contract to build a private prison at Sale, three hours east of Melbourne. While prison minister Pat McNamara has been talking up the Gippsland region's employment prospects and the government's savings, many are questioning both the economics and the morality of punishment for profit.
Fulham Prison, as it will be known, is due to open in 1997. It will house 600 male medium security prisoners, although Burchfield believes that with the closure of the state's main prison, Pentridge, some maximum security, long-term prisoners as well as lower security prisoners may well be sent to Fulham.
The consortium includes Australasian Correctional Management (ACM), which runs the Arthur Gorrie Remand Centre in Queensland and Junee in NSW. McNamara told the Victorian parliament that ACM a had a good track record. Burchfield argues that evidence from Queensland and NSW shows this is far from the truth. She told Green Left Weekly that ACM has a "chequered history" which the public needs to know about.
ACM is 100% owned by Wackenhut, a large US security company, which operates in more than 40 countries, mainly protecting corporate offices and US embassies. Last year, Wackenhut was called before a US House of Representatives committee of inquiry which was investigating misconduct during 1991 in the operation of an Alaskan pipeline for which Wackenhut provided the security.
The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company hired Wackenhut to spy on a whistle blower who had been passing information on the company's bad environmental practices to Congress. The worker brought an invasion of privacy lawsuit against Alyeska, which spent more than $10 million in its defence. Although it did not concede any wrongdoing, it did not contest that, among other things, it had used Wackenhut's services to: tap the worker's phone; rifle through his garbage, mail, phone records and credit cards; and hire women "operatives" to try to entrap him into admissions or actions which might discredit him.
The inquiry found that Wackenhut had obstructed the committee's investigation and had breached the privacy sections of the US Constitution.
According to Burchfield, "After George Wackenhut [the company's head and former FBI agent] went before the inquiry, one of the committee's members said he was very concerned that Wackenhut seemed to have no idea what was legal and what wasn't".
The Victorian government hasn't learned the lessons from two years of problems at an operating private prison at Junee, NSW, Burchfield said. ACM has had a lot of difficulty maintaining staff levels and recruiting specialist staff at the prison, situated five hours south of Sydney. Friends and relatives are also finding it hard to visit regularly — something that has added significantly to Junee's problems. Burchfield predicts the same will happen at Fulham, which is currently inaccessible by public transport.
As for benefits to the Gippsland community, Burchfield is sceptical. She related the story of the local baker at Junee who won the prison contract but was later replaced when ACM found another baker in a larger nearby town who could provide the bread cheaper. "Obviously private companies are not going to use local products and services if they are more expensive."
The prisons-for-profit option fits in with the current "law and order" obsession and neo-liberal economic agenda being pushed by both Labor and Liberal governments. Australia now has the highest percentage of prisoners in private prisons in the world. But does this result in substantial cost savings for governments?
Burchfield said, "There is no evidence from the research done in Queensland and a recent OECD report to show that private prisons are cheaper". This is backed up by more recent reports from the US where private prisons have been operating for some time.
The preliminary work on the Fulham contract was paid for by the Victorian government. ACM will raise its own finances to construct the building, and will therefore own it. However, it will be paid by the government to manage the prison, something that Burchfield says is totally wrong. Companies should not be allowed to make profits from imprisonment, she believes, adding, "If things go wrong, it will be very difficult for the government to take back the operation".
A March ACTU submission to an inquiry on the contracting out of public sector services noted that "within the prison industry in NSW it is generally believed that while the contracted fee to the private provider at Junee is $16 million a year, the actual cost is closer to $21 million, with the government making up the difference". In other words, if the budget blows out, the government pays.
Added to this are all the hidden subsidies inherent in private prisons being part of the state system. According to the same submission, "If these costs were quantified, it is arguable that no private prison would be economically justifiable".
Yet, despite the amount of public money involved in private prisons, the public is denied access to the contracts. "Commercial confidentiality" has shrouded all prison privatisation plans, including the one at Sale.
"The public should have the right to see all the documents relating to prison privatisation", Burchfield said. "Unfortunately, this is not the case. When the Victorian government enacted legislation to allow for private prisons, they inserted a clause which said that private prisons were going to be subject to freedom of information legislation. But unfortunately the Freedom of Information Act says that information that is commercially confidential can be exempted."
The state ALP has tried through the FOI and been refused access to all the documents relating to private prisons. It has now gone to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, arguing that it is in the public and prisoners' interest to have access to this information.
"Just how much money is 'saved' by governments is highly questionable. Because companies are out to make a profit, they find ways of cutting costs. And from the evidence we've seen so far, it's prisoners who will be disadvantaged", said Burchfield.
According to the ACTU submission, "The key variable in the attractiveness to operators of private prisons is a lowering of labour costs ... These include the removal of penalty rates, locality allowances, and the reduction in trained and experienced staff. The practice has been to hire casual, non-unionised staff who have no previous experience of the corrections industry ..."
A comparison of NSW state prison and Junee prison employees bears this out; the former are significantly better off. Not only are trainees at Junee paid considerably less ($16,000 compared to $27,000), but ACM offers no penalties or leave loadings, and sick leave is eight days per year at Junee, compared to 15 for state employees.
Junee's image has been badly tarnished by the huge staff turnover. Apart from the lower wages, Burchfield believes that the prison's isolation makes it unattractive for specialist staff. "In the area of programs and services to prisoners, one staff member leaves every three weeks and two days."
Low staff levels mean that much more electronic surveillance is used — adding even more to the high tension and stress problems. Junee is also renowned for its riots, which are related to bad prisoner treatment and the quality of the training programs.
"Basically, the prisoners are bored; they are not being given sufficient opportunities in education, training or industry to keep them occupied. As a result, the level of tension in Junee continues to increase." During one such disturbance, ACM used tear gas.
Burchfield said that the contract monitor's report had also cited some occupational health and safety issues, such as drug and alcohol counselling, which was not being provided.
Given the secrecy surrounding private prison operations, the report by the contract monitor, who spends time at the prison each week, is the only way some of the problems have come to light. But these reports do not necessarily give the whole picture, since the contract monitor's position is funded by governments which are keen to downplay the problems. "It is really important that independent research is done on the prisons to ensure that all the information gets out", said Burchfield.
Another worrying aspect is the lack of discussion about rehabilitation alternatives; keeping people out of the system is now receiving even less government attention. "We know people are not rehabilitated in prison, and that makes the [obsession with privatisation] even more unfortunate", said Burchfield.
"Obviously it is going to advantage the private prison companies enormously if more people are in prison; there's an opportunity to build more prisons and that means more profits."
The Federation of Community Legal Centres is calling for a public inquiry into prison privatisation.