G
_ G O D _
Guest
UK currently represents second-largest prison market
in the world. And immigration prisons are no exception..
except that they are not called prisons any more.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/380779.html
"It is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This
is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist."
- Jack Straw, Shadow Home Secretary.
"If there are contracts in the pipeline and the only way of getting
the new prison accommodation in place very quickly is by signing
those contracts, then I will sign those contracts."
- Jack Straw, now Home Secretary
"As a citizen, I would not like to see that many people locked
up. But as we're in the business, I'd like to play our part in this."
- A director of Premier Prison Services
Unsurprisingly, the move towards privatising UK prisons began in
the late 1980s under the Thatcherite government, whose political
ideology centred around reducing the role of the state in delivering
public services. Certain influential people and institutions played
a big role in this. One of them was undoubtedly Adam Smith Institute
(ASI), a key think-tank of the 'New Right'. In 1984, ASI suggested
that the UK should privatise the building and running of prisons
arguing that this "would overcome both the spiralling costs of the
prison system and the shortage of places by using innovative
managerial and technological methods and by concentrating
resources on capital investment rather than increased labour
costs."
In 1988, the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee, under the chairmanship of
Conservative MP Sir Edward Gardner (who was soon to become the Chief Executive of a
new company, Contract Prisons, that was formed to exploit new opportunities in the
sector), made a number of high-profile visits to private prison facilities in the
United States, several of which were operated by the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA). The issue of private prisons dominated the subsequent discussions of
the Committee, whose members included John Wheeler MP. Wheeler was also Director
General of the British Security Industry Association, whose members included Group 4
and Securicor, both of which subsequently won prison contracts.
According to a 1989 article in The Guardian, the "private prison network" came
together on September 15, 1988, at a dinner for more than 150 people, given by the
conservative Carlton Club's political committee. "All the various players were
there," the article by D. Rose read: "representatives of the ASI and other right wing
policy units, civil servants, John Wheeler and his colleagues, architects and people
from the consortia ... a mood of satisfied expectation was beginning to emerge."
So, following a tendering process, in which the public sector was barred from
participating, the Prison Service invited private companies in 1990 to bid for
contracts to manage prisons. In 1991 a European company, Group 4, was awarded the
first ever UK private prison contract to manage HMP Wolds in Yorkshire. The newly
constructed 320-bed prison for unsentenced male prisoners had previously been
earmarked for public management. Wolds opened on 6 April, 1992, but even before the
'experimental prison' had taken its first prisoners, the government had made plans to
contract out the management of two more facilities which would hold sentenced
prisoners. Project Quantum, as the Prison Service then labelled the scheme, was the
largest ever transfer of Prison Service jobs to the private sector, affecting 130
prisons and Prison Service headquarters in England and Wales and threatening 2,510
jobs.
The Criminal Justice Act 1991 contained a provision allowing the management of any
prison, not just remand centres, to be contracted out to any agency the Home
Secretary considered appropriate. On 3 February, 1993, as if to signal the
government's long term intentions, the application of the 1991 Act was extended from
new prisons to existing facilities as well. The much-talked-about "step-by-step
strategy" was ignored even though there were indicators that all was not well at
Wolds, the so-called experiment.
Neither a damning report by the Prison Reform Trust on Wolds in April 1993 nor
critical reports by the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the National Audit Office
managed to get in the way of the government's announcement in 1993 that all new
prisons would be privately built and operated. By 1994, two further private prisons
had been opened: Blakenhurst in Redditch, the West Midlands, which was awarded to UK
Detention Services (UKDS), and Doncaster in north England, which was awarded to
Premier Prison Services. Shortly after winning the contract for Wolds, Group 4 also
won a contract to run Campsfield Detention Centre in Oxfordshire, the first in a
series of privately run immigration detention centres.
Since then, prison privatisation has continued to expand and has actually gained
extra momentum, despite all expectations to the contrary, with the election of a
Labour government in 1997. During the election campaign, various Labour officials
pronounced, very clearly, that prison management would return to the public sector if
they won. In 1995, Jack Straw, then Shadow Home Secretary, stated that "It is not
appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where
a free market does not exist" and "... at the expiry of their contracts a Labour
government will bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly
as public services." However, within days of taking office as a Home Secretary, in a
"U-turn sharp enough to make a teenage joy rider proud," as one commentator then
described it, he sanctioned two new private finance prison deals. On 8 May, 1997,
seven days after the general elections, he said "If there are contracts in the
pipeline and the only way of getting the [new prison] accommodation in place very
quickly is by signing those contracts, then I will sign those contracts." In a speech
to the Prison Officers Association's annual conference on 19 May, 1998, Mr Straw
revealed that he had reviewed the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee and
decided that all new prisons in England and Wales would both be privately built and
privately run. This included architectural planning, building, furbishing, raising
capital and prison operations.
Central to the Conservative government's long-term strategy of privatisation was the
implementation of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which was launched in
November 1992 to "encourage each government department to explore actively the scope
for private finance in future planning." The PFI is a financial mechanism to obtain
private finance which could satisfy the political need to increase investment in
infrastructure without affecting public borrowing, guaranteeing large contracts for
construction companies and new investment opportunities for finance capital. The
current Labour government's commitment to privatisation is evident from its
unswerving commitment to the PFI throughout the services sector, from schools and
hospitals to prisons and detention centres.
Private immigration prisons
Private interest in immigration detention has been evident since the beginning of the
prison privatisation movement. But while the UK government had contracted Securicor
in August 1970 to run two small immigration detention facilities at Heathrow and
Manchester airports, it was in the US that the private sector was contracted to run
immigration detention centres on a much larger scale. Today's private prison industry
had its beginnings in 1980 in Nashville, Tennessee, at a campaign fundraiser for
Presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan. The Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party
and the Corrections Commissioner of Virginia, along with his counterpart in
Tennessee, set up what became the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Three
years later, they won their first contract with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS), an agency which, although occasionally turning to the Federal Bureau
of Prisons, had no tradition of detaining 'illegal immigrants' itself (for more
details, see this article for example).
In 1987, CCA formed a British company, UK Detention Services Ltd. (UKDS), as a joint
venture with two long-established British construction companies, Sir Robert McAlpine
& Sons Ltd. and John Mowlem & Co. Both of these companies were regular contributors
to the then ruling Conservative Party. One of UKDS's stated aims was "lobbying the
government to implement prison privatisation." In a memorandum signed on 19 January,
1988, the parties agreed to "promote the private design, financing, construction and
management by private contractors of prisons and remand facilities in the United
Kingdom (including the acquisition of land and/or other property in connection
therewith)."
Securicor and Group 4 Securitas also set up subsidiaries specializing in the
provision of detention services, in response to a government decision in 1993 (?) to
contract out selected prison services. It is significant that the number of detention
places available began to increase sharply at the same time as private corporations
were beginning to win lucrative contracts in the prison sector.
Like the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 clearly
stated that "the Secretary of State [for the Home Department] may enter into a
contract with another person for the provision or running (or the provision and
running) by him, or (if the contract so provides) for the running by sub-contractors
of his, of any detention centre or part of a detention centre." Report after report,
various government bodies and mainstream media documented the "degrading",
"over-crowded" and "badly run" detention centres, effectively justifying the drive to
both build new detention centres and do so using private money.
Seven of the UK's current 10 immigration detention centres are now run by private
contractors. And like with other prisons and prison services, it is only a handful of
global corporations competing for contracts: Group 4 Falck, Wackenhut (now GEO),
Serco, Sodexho and Securicor. What actually exists is a complicated and ever-changing
set of intertwined relationships. The long list of aliases and subsidiaries used by
these companies, as well as the perpetual mergers, sell-outs, buy-backs and
re-branding, which characterise the industry, make it extremely difficult to keep
track of which company has a stake in which UK facility. Here is a classic example:
In 2002 Group 4 bought the Wackenhut Corporation and acquired a 57 per cent stake in
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC). As well as other international interests,
WCC owned 50 per cent of Premier Prisons, the largest private prison operator in the
UK. So Group 4 also acquired that stake. However, following a legal challenge, Serco,
which owned the other 50 per cent of Premier, eventually won the right to sole
ownership. Then, in 2003, WCC bought back the 57 per cent of the company that Group 4
had acquired. To add to the confusion, WCC recently changed its name to GEO Group
Inc.
At the time of writing this article, three immigration detention centres were run by
the Prison Service: Dover, Haslar and Lindholme. However, the Home Office announced
on the 29 June, 2004, that it will transfer the management of Dover and Haslar from
the Prison Service to the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), while Lindholme prison
will supposedly be phased out as soon as spaces become available in the BIA detention
estate. The other seven are run and owned as follows:
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
in the world. And immigration prisons are no exception..
except that they are not called prisons any more.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/380779.html
"It is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This
is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist."
- Jack Straw, Shadow Home Secretary.
"If there are contracts in the pipeline and the only way of getting
the new prison accommodation in place very quickly is by signing
those contracts, then I will sign those contracts."
- Jack Straw, now Home Secretary
"As a citizen, I would not like to see that many people locked
up. But as we're in the business, I'd like to play our part in this."
- A director of Premier Prison Services
Unsurprisingly, the move towards privatising UK prisons began in
the late 1980s under the Thatcherite government, whose political
ideology centred around reducing the role of the state in delivering
public services. Certain influential people and institutions played
a big role in this. One of them was undoubtedly Adam Smith Institute
(ASI), a key think-tank of the 'New Right'. In 1984, ASI suggested
that the UK should privatise the building and running of prisons
arguing that this "would overcome both the spiralling costs of the
prison system and the shortage of places by using innovative
managerial and technological methods and by concentrating
resources on capital investment rather than increased labour
costs."
In 1988, the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee, under the chairmanship of
Conservative MP Sir Edward Gardner (who was soon to become the Chief Executive of a
new company, Contract Prisons, that was formed to exploit new opportunities in the
sector), made a number of high-profile visits to private prison facilities in the
United States, several of which were operated by the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA). The issue of private prisons dominated the subsequent discussions of
the Committee, whose members included John Wheeler MP. Wheeler was also Director
General of the British Security Industry Association, whose members included Group 4
and Securicor, both of which subsequently won prison contracts.
According to a 1989 article in The Guardian, the "private prison network" came
together on September 15, 1988, at a dinner for more than 150 people, given by the
conservative Carlton Club's political committee. "All the various players were
there," the article by D. Rose read: "representatives of the ASI and other right wing
policy units, civil servants, John Wheeler and his colleagues, architects and people
from the consortia ... a mood of satisfied expectation was beginning to emerge."
So, following a tendering process, in which the public sector was barred from
participating, the Prison Service invited private companies in 1990 to bid for
contracts to manage prisons. In 1991 a European company, Group 4, was awarded the
first ever UK private prison contract to manage HMP Wolds in Yorkshire. The newly
constructed 320-bed prison for unsentenced male prisoners had previously been
earmarked for public management. Wolds opened on 6 April, 1992, but even before the
'experimental prison' had taken its first prisoners, the government had made plans to
contract out the management of two more facilities which would hold sentenced
prisoners. Project Quantum, as the Prison Service then labelled the scheme, was the
largest ever transfer of Prison Service jobs to the private sector, affecting 130
prisons and Prison Service headquarters in England and Wales and threatening 2,510
jobs.
The Criminal Justice Act 1991 contained a provision allowing the management of any
prison, not just remand centres, to be contracted out to any agency the Home
Secretary considered appropriate. On 3 February, 1993, as if to signal the
government's long term intentions, the application of the 1991 Act was extended from
new prisons to existing facilities as well. The much-talked-about "step-by-step
strategy" was ignored even though there were indicators that all was not well at
Wolds, the so-called experiment.
Neither a damning report by the Prison Reform Trust on Wolds in April 1993 nor
critical reports by the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the National Audit Office
managed to get in the way of the government's announcement in 1993 that all new
prisons would be privately built and operated. By 1994, two further private prisons
had been opened: Blakenhurst in Redditch, the West Midlands, which was awarded to UK
Detention Services (UKDS), and Doncaster in north England, which was awarded to
Premier Prison Services. Shortly after winning the contract for Wolds, Group 4 also
won a contract to run Campsfield Detention Centre in Oxfordshire, the first in a
series of privately run immigration detention centres.
Since then, prison privatisation has continued to expand and has actually gained
extra momentum, despite all expectations to the contrary, with the election of a
Labour government in 1997. During the election campaign, various Labour officials
pronounced, very clearly, that prison management would return to the public sector if
they won. In 1995, Jack Straw, then Shadow Home Secretary, stated that "It is not
appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where
a free market does not exist" and "... at the expiry of their contracts a Labour
government will bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly
as public services." However, within days of taking office as a Home Secretary, in a
"U-turn sharp enough to make a teenage joy rider proud," as one commentator then
described it, he sanctioned two new private finance prison deals. On 8 May, 1997,
seven days after the general elections, he said "If there are contracts in the
pipeline and the only way of getting the [new prison] accommodation in place very
quickly is by signing those contracts, then I will sign those contracts." In a speech
to the Prison Officers Association's annual conference on 19 May, 1998, Mr Straw
revealed that he had reviewed the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee and
decided that all new prisons in England and Wales would both be privately built and
privately run. This included architectural planning, building, furbishing, raising
capital and prison operations.
Central to the Conservative government's long-term strategy of privatisation was the
implementation of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which was launched in
November 1992 to "encourage each government department to explore actively the scope
for private finance in future planning." The PFI is a financial mechanism to obtain
private finance which could satisfy the political need to increase investment in
infrastructure without affecting public borrowing, guaranteeing large contracts for
construction companies and new investment opportunities for finance capital. The
current Labour government's commitment to privatisation is evident from its
unswerving commitment to the PFI throughout the services sector, from schools and
hospitals to prisons and detention centres.
Private immigration prisons
Private interest in immigration detention has been evident since the beginning of the
prison privatisation movement. But while the UK government had contracted Securicor
in August 1970 to run two small immigration detention facilities at Heathrow and
Manchester airports, it was in the US that the private sector was contracted to run
immigration detention centres on a much larger scale. Today's private prison industry
had its beginnings in 1980 in Nashville, Tennessee, at a campaign fundraiser for
Presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan. The Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party
and the Corrections Commissioner of Virginia, along with his counterpart in
Tennessee, set up what became the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Three
years later, they won their first contract with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS), an agency which, although occasionally turning to the Federal Bureau
of Prisons, had no tradition of detaining 'illegal immigrants' itself (for more
details, see this article for example).
In 1987, CCA formed a British company, UK Detention Services Ltd. (UKDS), as a joint
venture with two long-established British construction companies, Sir Robert McAlpine
& Sons Ltd. and John Mowlem & Co. Both of these companies were regular contributors
to the then ruling Conservative Party. One of UKDS's stated aims was "lobbying the
government to implement prison privatisation." In a memorandum signed on 19 January,
1988, the parties agreed to "promote the private design, financing, construction and
management by private contractors of prisons and remand facilities in the United
Kingdom (including the acquisition of land and/or other property in connection
therewith)."
Securicor and Group 4 Securitas also set up subsidiaries specializing in the
provision of detention services, in response to a government decision in 1993 (?) to
contract out selected prison services. It is significant that the number of detention
places available began to increase sharply at the same time as private corporations
were beginning to win lucrative contracts in the prison sector.
Like the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 clearly
stated that "the Secretary of State [for the Home Department] may enter into a
contract with another person for the provision or running (or the provision and
running) by him, or (if the contract so provides) for the running by sub-contractors
of his, of any detention centre or part of a detention centre." Report after report,
various government bodies and mainstream media documented the "degrading",
"over-crowded" and "badly run" detention centres, effectively justifying the drive to
both build new detention centres and do so using private money.
Seven of the UK's current 10 immigration detention centres are now run by private
contractors. And like with other prisons and prison services, it is only a handful of
global corporations competing for contracts: Group 4 Falck, Wackenhut (now GEO),
Serco, Sodexho and Securicor. What actually exists is a complicated and ever-changing
set of intertwined relationships. The long list of aliases and subsidiaries used by
these companies, as well as the perpetual mergers, sell-outs, buy-backs and
re-branding, which characterise the industry, make it extremely difficult to keep
track of which company has a stake in which UK facility. Here is a classic example:
In 2002 Group 4 bought the Wackenhut Corporation and acquired a 57 per cent stake in
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC). As well as other international interests,
WCC owned 50 per cent of Premier Prisons, the largest private prison operator in the
UK. So Group 4 also acquired that stake. However, following a legal challenge, Serco,
which owned the other 50 per cent of Premier, eventually won the right to sole
ownership. Then, in 2003, WCC bought back the 57 per cent of the company that Group 4
had acquired. To add to the confusion, WCC recently changed its name to GEO Group
Inc.
At the time of writing this article, three immigration detention centres were run by
the Prison Service: Dover, Haslar and Lindholme. However, the Home Office announced
on the 29 June, 2004, that it will transfer the management of Dover and Haslar from
the Prison Service to the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), while Lindholme prison
will supposedly be phased out as soon as spaces become available in the BIA detention
estate. The other seven are run and owned as follows:
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
