Media Release
3 February 2011
For immediate release

Private Prison Contract Unethical

Tuesday’s announcement from the Serco Group that it has signed the contract for the management of Mt Eden prison is also an announcement from the NZ government that they are willing to behave unethically with little regard for the NZ public or the people within the prison system - both prison workers and prisoners themselves.

Despite a wealth of evidence showing that private prisons do not save money, have worse employment conditions and have greater incidences of overcrowding and violence, the government seems prepared to push on regardless, relying on an ideology that has no place within the prison system.

“The fact is that running prisons for profit is unethical,” says Paul O’Neill from the Howard League for Prison Reform. “No decent society should be making a profit out of locking people up. Attaching a financial incentive to having more people in prison can only lead to greater imprisonment and fewer prisoners rehabilitated. It’s absolutely contrary to the values we put forward as a decent society.”

Serco already has a reputation for overcrowding, violence and lack of adequate care in the prisons it runs overseas. Experiences from private prisons in the US, Australia and Britain show that for a prison to run at a profit, the first things to be cut back are staff numbers, wages and conditions, and prisoner rehabilitation programmes.

“We need to re-think our priorities when it comes to prison spending. Rather than reducing costs without looking at the ramifications for society, we need to look at what areas need greater spending. The fact is that the majority of people who go to prison serve a sentence of less than three years. This means that they will be released back in to the community. Currently the majority of those people will end up re-offending. We need to put more money in to rehabilitation programmes so that when people get out of prison they don’t re-offend. This will not only save on prison costs in the long run as we lock less people up, but will also reduce the societal costs involved for victims of crime and their families. For Serco however, the best outcome for their shareholders is that people released from prison re-offend and end up straight back in their prison, thereby making them more money.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media