The Price of Privatising Prisons

The Biggest Company You've Never Heard Of: Serco plc sits at the centre of a vast international web of business operations, including prisons, immigration detention centres, nuclear facilities, services to the US National Security Agency, air traffic control systems, railways, hospitals and schools.

ADAM RICKWOOD was just 14 years old when he died. His "carers" at Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham found him hanging in his cell. Adam’s suicide, in August 2004, remains the United Kingdom’s youngest-ever "death in custody" case.

But it was much more than that.

The following year a judge ruled that, shortly before his death, Adam had been subjected to "unlawful force" by his so-called "carers".

The incident that led to Adam’s suicide began when he resisted being placed in solitary confinement. Employing one of the "pain compliance techniques" secretly recommended to Britain’s privatised secure training centres by the UK Ministry of Justice, Adam’s "carers" struck him violently on the side of his nose, causing it to bleed profusely.

Having administered their state-sanctioned "nose distraction technique", Adam’s "carers" then confined their sobbing, blood-covered "client" to his cell, where he lay, without medical treatment, for several hours. Alone, in pain, fearing further assaults and convinced that he would never again be free, the traumatised teenager took his own life.

The private-sector organisation contracted by the British Government to run the Hassockfield secure training centre is called Serco plc.

Earlier this week, our own Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, announced that this vast transnational conglomerate, memorably described by Guardian journalist Jane Martinson as "the biggest company you’ve never hear of"; the same company in whose "care" 14 year-old Adam Rickwood was driven to suicide; would soon be running the Mt Eden/Auckland Central Remand Prison.

In a press-release announcing the contract, Ms Collins explained: "Serco has a strong track record in managing prisons. I’m confident that the company will bring the high standards of professionalism, safety, rehabilitation and security expected by the Government to Mt Eden/ACRP."

One wonders exactly how Ms Collins and her Department of Corrections define "high standards of professionalism" when the fatal brutalisation of a 14 year-old boy – but one of many cases of prisoner and detainee ill-treatment uncovered at Serco-run facilities in both the UK and Australia – is part of the corporation’s "strong track record in managing prisons".

One certainly hopes that the ex-police, ex-military, security guards employed by Serco to keep order in the "Aussie Archipelago" of Immigration Detention Centres (security guards who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Blackwater Corporation’s notorious "contractors" in US-occupied Iraq) are not what Minister Collins has in mind when she talks about Serco bringing in "new ideas and international best practice".

Serco will certainly bring a wealth of experience in the business of privatisation. Three-quarters of the 50,000 people employed by Serco across the planet are former civil-servants. Not that there’s anything like a one-to-one correlation between the state-sector employees Serco replaces and the people who end up on its permanent payroll.

As Bevan Hanlon from the Correction Officers’ union noted in his response to Ms Collins’ announcement., Serco take-overs usually result in about 30 percent of the workers formerly employed by the State failing to secure re-employment in the new, privately-run entity.

This is hardly surprising, since Serco’s ability to turn a profit on the "business" of incarceration is almost wholly dependent upon its ability to provide the State with an equivalent level of "service" with fewer resources and far fewer staff.

It’s a Devil’s bargain. Ms Collins must know that Serco’s loss-leading tender can only be recouped at the expense of the prisoners in its "care". When fewer corrections staff are available to perform their highly demanding and often dangerous duties, the international literature all points to inmates spending more time in dangerously overcrowded and unsanitary cells, receiving reduced rations of inferior quality, having fewer exercise and rehabilitative opportunities, and being afforded considerably less dignity than when they were the responsibility of the State.

And, of course, these cut-backs come at a price. For individuals suffering from mental illnesses and/or drug and alcohol problems – prisoners without the intellectual or physical resources to withstand the constantly degraded living conditions – the stress will quickly become unbearable. Violence – against staff, other prisoners and, most tragically, against themselves – will increase.

In recommending Serco to her cabinet colleagues, Ms Collins has – wittingly or unwittingly – injected a deadly toxin into our correctional facilities. The outcome is horribly predictable: "deaths in custody" will rise dramatically.

Sooner than she would wish, Minister Collins will be presented with an Adam Rickwood of her own.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 December 2010.