Britain’s prison population has continued to grow rapidly over the past decades, exposing the insufficiency of the existing prisons estate forcing the UK to experiment with the idea of Private Prisons. Privately run prisons originated in the USA and Australia and were introduced in the UK in 1992 with HMP Wolds. Wolds was a contracted-out prison, on an experimental basis in order to determine whether more privatisation of prisons would follow depending on the results. However, by the time the results were collected this idea had long since been abandoned and many private prisons were well underway. Since the early 1990s, British Governments have issued contracts to private firms allowing them to construct and manage prisons. In November 1992 the Private Finance Initiative was launched in order to encourage all government departments to explore the use of private finance. Derek Lewis claimed that “the private sector has demonstrated the ability to deliver more effective regimes at lower costs. And I am sure more benefits will follow, particularly as we integrate the supervision of privately managed prisons more closely with the management of the public sector3 (NACRO, 1993:3)
The privatisation of certain prisons was a decision made by the previous government to cope with overcrowding throughout prisons in the United Kingdom and to spread the costs of interning offenders. The role of the private sector in the criminal justice service is now substantial. There are currently 134 prisons in England and Wales, at present, there are 14 private prisons contractually managed by private companies such as G4S Justice Services, Serco Custodial Services and Sodexo Justice Services.
The conservative government looked at the idea of privatising prisons in the early 1990s by allocating short-term contracts to security companies to control a limited number of publicly owned prisons. Then, private involvement was seen as superior in comparison to traditional public provision, and ideology as well as cost was a motivating factor. However, two of the four initial contracts have returned to the Prison Service. The labour Government continued to use the private sector, as reports such as Lord Laming’s into the management of the Prison Service as well as monitoring the use of private prisons in the US, led them to believe private prisons would have a beneficial and positive outcome. They perused this through the use of the Private Finance Initiative whereby public services raise funds for capital projects through commercial organisations.
The legislation was originally intended to only apply to remand prisons. The idea was, parliament would evaluate The Wolds with the proposal of further privatisation throughout UK prisons. However, the legislation was quickly revised giving the Secretary of State power to privatise all prisons. The first four prisons to be privatised were simply privately managed and all other functions remained the responsibility of the state. However, privatisation now consists of the design, construction, management and financing of the prison. HMP Altcourse was the first designed, constructed, managed ad financed private prison in the UK opening its doors on the 1st December 1997. DCMF prisons are designed, constructed managed and financed by the private sector. The contract runs for 25 years, after which the building becomes the property of the Prison service.
Private companies agree to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) which is a highly complex contract stating the specific services and procedures the government requires the company to follow and the agreed rate for doing it in order to keep standards expected within every prison. Private prisons are subject to penalties for failure to meet performance targets set by the government. Contrariwise, in December 2003 the prison service declared Dartmoor and Liverpool prisons may be handed over to the private sector if they fail to hit performance targets within five years. In the event both stayed in the public sector.
In their short history, the privatization of prisons in the UK is often opposed for many reasons. One of those being the idea that people shouldn’t be able to earn a profit from imprisonment because “not only was the concept of prison care antithetical to the notion of commercial business but that it was morally inappropriate to profit from the punishment of offenders”1 Even so, the government has confirmed that it will follow the previous policy set by the Labour government, expanding private involvement in the UK prison system. The Prison Officers’ Union launches a ‘Prisons are not for Profit’ campaign in 2009 against private prisons. The union claims that private prisons employ fewer staff in order to maximise profit thus, leading to less security throughout private prisons. With this been said, further evidence has shown that there has been no issues with the safety and security of prisoners in private prisons. A further criticism of privately owned prisons is that it is believed the quality of service within these institutions is being reduced in order to improve efficiency. There is concern regarding public grants that are allocated to private prisons, as it is believed that they are not being used for prison improvement. Claims state that private prisons intend to increase electronic surveillance throughout the prisons in order to watch inmates allowing the prisons to reduce the amount of staff needed.
The treasury claims that PFI is only used “where the value for money it offers is not at the cost of the terms and conditions of staff”5 (HM Treasury, 2003:2) however, this is not represented in the research. Overall, there were “17% fewer staff per prisoner in private prisons. Working hours in privately managed prisons were 3% longer and planned time off was on average 13% lower”6 (Tackling prison overcrowding, page 96). Despite some 20 years of controversy, employees have been greatly affected by the implications of private prisons which have been ignored. IT is questioned, why the government needs private prisons in order to make prisons cost effective rather than doing this themselves. Public prisons could reduce the amount of staff and decrease the wage. However if they believe it is unethical to do this, private prisons should not be allowed either. The government must continue to ensure that private companies are not cutting costs in order to become more efficient just because they need to meet the standards of their contract. The safety and security of prisons, as well as the standards and care of staff is the most fundamental part of the prison and should not be forfeited.
According to the National Audit Office, “There is a very high turnover of staff in most private prisons and in each case turnover was higher than the public sector. Turnover is particularly high in private prisons that have opened recently, reflecting the fact that many new recruits have no previous experience of prisons”2(National Audit Office, 2003:32). However, Prison Custody Officers are paid a lower salary than those in public prisons and therefore, this may be a reason for a higher staff turnover in the private sector. As a result, this led the report to claim that the environment in privately owned prisons is less safe than those in the public sector, as prison officers have less experience. On the other hand, the report also looked into which prisons are performing relatively well in comparison to those with a cause for concern. The report stated that out of the four prisons with poor performance, only one of these was a private prison, and six of the nine private prisons fell in the acceptable performance category with a further two privately managed prisons. Though it is important to take into account that not all public prisons were included in this survey, it is evident that private prisons perform better on the whole, though public prisons seem to have a higher security rating. The report as a whole shows that the Prison Service has benefited from using the private sector since they were first introduced and it is important to take into account new prisons will have additional problems which will decrease over time, in comparison to those which have been in practice for many years.
The private sector aims to innovate and promote a more positive staff/prisoner relationship within private prisons, by treating them in a more positive manner by using first names and mentoring schemes. Even though the privatization of prisons went ahead before the results from Wolds, it was found that one of the main overall conclusions which was drawn from the study is that “Wolds provided a much-improved prison environment from prisoners than that which prevailed in other local prisons in the region at that time. The quality of staff and the fact that they generally treated prisoners fairly, with respect and humanity were the most important dimensions in this perception”4(privatizing prisons bottom of page 177). Even though it seems the government is focussed on creating cost effective prisons and dealing with overcrowding, an important factor is the environment in which prisoners live. The point of prisoners being in prison is for them to rehabilitate in the correct environment. Being treated fairly is an important aspect of prisons. The senior management of the Prison Service has been able to adopt these ideas allowing their staff to act in a similar way to improve staff/prisoner relationships in the public sector also.
Private prisons are still relatively new in terms of prison history, however recent studies still show that half of the public oppose to privately owned prisons. According to the Populus Poll (July 2012), just 37% of people say they are comfortable with private prisons whereas, 49% are uncomfortable, the statistics are similar across all age and gender groups. However, this could be due to the fact that private prisons are still widely unknown to many of the public and many people do not have a full understanding of them. To the public, it may seem the government is more concerned with making money from prisoners rather than tackling the most fundamental problem, of keeping the public safe and reforming prisoners of future offences.
In spite of the success at Wolds Prison, there is little advantage of private prisons, and anything they have achieved could well be easily achieved in a well-managed public prison. However, there are no major concerns with a small percentage of prisons being privately run. According to reports from the Chief Inspector of prisons’, private prisons are among the best prisons in the UK. The privatization of UK prisons is occurring and will continue to occur in the foreseeable future, it is questionable how the government would raise the funds to construct new prisons, as prison populations continue to rise. After a lengthy and controversial process criticised by the unions, HMP Birmingham was signed to G4S in October 2011 and two new private prisons were granted, HMP Oakwood and HMP Thameside which opened in spring 2012.