Private prisons will cost more and deliver less

The Government’s plan, announced today, for a new prison built and operated under a private-public partnership is bad news for tax payers, says PSA National Secretary Richard Wagstaff.

“Public private partnerships (PPPs) overseas have been shown to offer only marginal value and can carry huge risks and costs. In the UK several PPP-built London hospitals are costing taxpayers millions because they are locked into crippling long-term contracts with private companies. As the New Zealand Treasury itself noted in 2006 ‘there is little reliable empirical evidence about the costs and benefits of PPPs’.”

“Applying the PPP model to prisons is particularly inappropriate,” says Richard Wagstaff.

“Overseas experience shows privately managed prisons often cut corners by employing fewer staff at lower wages. They seek to maximise profits at the expense of rehabilitation programmes. Private prisons have a vested interest in repeat customers. In Britain private prisons scored badly on security and maintaining order and control. In Australia, Victoria has moved away from private prisons.”

Under the previous National Government Auckland Central Remand Prison was managed by the private sector but produced no savings for the taxpayer. Figures from the Corrections Department show that it cost the Australian company that managed the remand prison from 2000 to 2005, $43,000 per inmate to run the prison while Corrections operating costs per remand prisoner were $36,000.

“The Government claims that a PPP prison will reduce the average cost per year of keeping a prisoner in jail but other social costs may be passed on to the community at large.”

“Do we really want to increase the risks to the public by handing over our prisons and our tax dollars to companies out to make a profit from incarceration?”

ENDS

© Scoop Media