Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a number of experts commenting on the issue of the privatisation of prisons in Australia. Shots of them speaking are intercut with footage showing the inside and outside of prisons. Lawyer Pauline Spencer observes that the law-and-order agenda is often used by politicians to gain media coverage at election time. Her comments are followed by footage of law-and-order news stories and media grabs by politicians.

Educational value points

• Privatisation refers to the transfer, usually through sale, of public assets such as industries and services to the private sector. This transfer can be full or partial. Since the 1990s both the Australian Government and the state and territory governments have been increasingly privatising public assets such as transport, utilities, communications, prisons and financial services such as banks and insurance. The huge cost of running some services, such as prisons, is often an incentive to sell or privatise the service, as is the lump sum that the government gains. This can be used to pay off debt, to invest in other infrastructure projects, or simply to transfer into consolidated revenue.

• State governments have contracted out the services associated with managing and building some prisons. The government pays a private company to deliver services such as design, construction, finances, ensuring compliance with legislation and policies, staff recruitment, reporting and record keeping, and insurance and indemnities as well as related services such as prison transport, holding cells and health and education services. One or more companies may deliver the services and the government monitors all privatised prisons to ensure accountability.

• Opponents of privatised prisons argue that it is morally wrong for private enterprise to profit from correctional services. In theory the purpose of a prison is to punish offenders by removing them from society while at the same time rehabilitating them and therefore preventing them reoffending. If the number of recidivists (or repeat offenders) is reduced, a private prison is actually reducing its supply of profit-producing customers. Thus it could be argued that there is little or no incentive for such prisons to reduce recidivism.

• Supporters of the privatisation of prisons present a number of arguments. For example, they assert that privatised prisons have much smaller bureaucracies and are therefore more efficient and better able to introduce innovations. Another argument is that governments are able to monitor private operators more objectively than they can monitor state-run institutions.

• In 2000 the Victorian Government resumed control of the Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre. This was the result of a report from the Correctional Services Commissioner, which found that the contracting company had failed to meet fundamental security and drug-prevention obligations.

• Australia has the highest proportion of inmates in private prisons of any nation. The documentary claims that 20 per cent of prisons in Australia are privatised and 50 per cent of prisoners in Australia serve their terms under private administration. Privatisation of prisons in Australia began at Borallon in Queensland in January 1990.

• There is a widely held perception that increased rates of imprisonment reduce the crime rate; however, statistics show that the overall crime rate in Australia has remained stable while the number of prisoners has increased. In the decade preceding 2006 there was a 42 per cent increase in prisoner numbers in Australia. In New South Wales there has been a 31 per cent increase in imprisonment since 1990; yet, the overall crime rate remained unchanged. Another perception is that longer sentences reduce crime. However, despite harsher penalties, between 1997 and 2001 assault and malicious damage to property increased; the only category of offence that decreased in occurrence was armed robbery.

• There is a number of alternatives to the kind of incarceration shown in the clip, including: fines; community service orders, in which an offender is required to undertake up to 500 hours of community service activity; and periodic detention, in which an offender is incarcerated for a number of days per week rather than full time. Another option is home detention, in which the offender is restricted to the home. However, these are often seen as 'soft’ options by a media that tends to emphasise the value of being 'tough on crime’.

This clip starts approximately 6 minutes into the documentary.

We see a gate open inwards to reveal a concrete courtyard with some stark buildings behind. Interview with Father Peter Norden, Jesuit Social Services. We see the silhouette of a man at a window walk down a prison corridor. There are flags with business logos on them beside Australian flags. We see male prisoners in recreational settings. Then the razor wire and fences on the perimeter of a prison. We also see the inhabited cells of the prison. There is music through the first half of the clip, we hear a female voice singing over a piano with slow drum beat.

Father Peter Norden Well, in Australia, there are some very significant differences in the operation of the private prisons than in the United States. For a start, nationally, 20% of our prison cells are now in the hands of private operators, whereas in the United States, it’s certainly less than 5%.

Pauline Spencer, lawyer US-based companies, Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut Corrections, dominate the market. They run through their subsidiaries, Corrections Corporation of Australia and Australasian Correctional Management. A third, UK based company, Group 4, also manages, builds and designs prisons in Australia.

Interview with Barrister Richard Bourke, Secretary, Criminal Bar Association.

Richard Bourke, barrister Victoria is actually engaged in an extraordinary experiment in privatisation. We’ve thrown ourselves into it with more gusto than any other area of the world. We’ve now got – I think we’re now over 50% of the prisoners in custody in Victoria are privatised, and it’s not just the prisons that are privatised. The holding cells are being privatised. Prisoner transport is being privatised. All of the health and educational services for prisoners are apt to be provided by private service providers. The entire system is being moved out of public control into the private realm.

Interview with Professor Richard Harding Director Crime Research Centre, University of Western Australia.

Professor Richard Harding, UWA One of the factors which causes there to be an open door, really, for people urging privatisation is the vast expansion in prison populations that has occurred in many parts of the world.

Interview with Pauline Spencer, Lawyer, Fitzroy Legal Service.

Pauline Spencer What we’re seeing in Victoria is part of a nationwide trend. The law and order agenda is whipped up by politicians. It’s easy for them to sell around election time. They don’t have to solve the real problems, they just have to beat the law and order drum.

Audiovisual montage of news grabs with people, police and politicians, newspaper reports and protest rallies with a crime and punishment theme.

Woman Where do you stand on mandatory sentencing?

Man 1 Three strikes and you are in.

Man 2 What the community wants, as well as punishment…

Man 3 The Aboriginal legal service today…

Man 4 These people are being kept by our money.

Reporter Both sides of politics deny they’re trying to outbid each other on law and order.

Bob Carr There should be no second chance.

We see a young man entering a courtroom. Interview with Professor Richard Harding.

Professor Richard Harding Crime policy is full of all sorts of unsustainable claims. One of them is that high rates of imprisonment reduce crime. They don’t.