New South Wales, Australia, prison officers say an Easter weekend outbreak of violence at Parklea prison is a prelude to further trouble in the state’s jails if the State Government privatises prison operations. Story from the Canberra Times.
The Prison Officers Vocational Branch, the union representing officers, says private jail operators would not employ enough staff to contain the sort of incident that occurred last Friday, in which a group of inmates, allegedly bikies, attacked another prisoner during morning muster, reportedly using sharpened toothbrushes.
The Department of Corrective Services has downplayed the incident. It said only seven prisoners were involved, and only one inmate, Mesbah Mirzaei, who allegedly led the attack, was a member of the bikie gang Notorious.
A company expected to bid for contracts to operate two jails in Australia has backed facilities in which inmates have keys to their cells and are on a first-name basis with their jailers. Gary Sturgess, research director of the U.K.-based Serco Group, will tell a New South Wales, Australia, parliamentary inquiry Friday that decency, not efficiency, is the main reason to privatize jails. This report from Fox News Australia.
He says overseas experience shows that prisoners enjoy more privileges — including being given the keys to their own cells — in correctional systems where private and public providers compete … Prisoners in these systems spend more time out of their cells and have far greater interaction with their jailers — with whom they are frequently on first-name terms — than in systems where public providers face no competition, Sturgess says. The results are safer jails and lower rates of reoffending.
Serco is expected to bid for the contracts to operate Cessnock prison, in the Hunter Valley, and Parklea prison, in western Sydney, when the jails are privatized this year. The company already operates one jail in Victoria and one in Western Australia.
Sturgess’s submission to the upper house inquiry links private jail services in Britain to the “decency agenda” pursued by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “Contract prisons in the U.K. are more humane, partly because government demanded a higher standard when writing the original contracts, partly because price was not allowed to dominate the procurement process, and partly because the political and policy environment at the time when the market was first established was focused on the quality of prison life,” the submission from Serco argues. He said the inmates in low- and medium-security prisons in Britain had been allowed to hold duplicate keys to their own cells, which improved both efficiency and decency.
A secret plan to move all prisoners from Cessnock Jail in New South Wales under the cover of darkness took place despite union officials slapping an emergency ban on the transfers. This report from the Daily Telegraph.
A convoy of prison vans – staffed by senior executive officers – was sent to the jail to begin staging the mass transfer of all 460 inmates from the prison. The operation got underway shortly after 11pm with prisoners being loaded 20 at a time into six prison vans for the journey to Sydney, where they were to be placed in a number of other correctional centres.
Union officials branded the operation as a recipe for disaster, claiming safety standards had been ignored. Public Service Association executive secretary Steve Turner said a ban had been placed on the movement of all prisoners last night. “It is hard enough to move one angry prisoner, let alone 20 at a time,” Mr Turner said …
According to sources inside the jail the first indication prisoners had of the move was when cell doors opened and they were ordered into trucks. “They will leave the jail empty-handed and they will be angry,” a source told The Daily Telegraph. They were to be transferred to Long Bay, Silverwater Prison and the John Maroney Correctional Centre.
Cessnock, which has been at the centre of the privatisation dispute between the State Government and the Corrective Services Union, has 460 minimum security prisoners and 100 maximum security prisoners. The Government’s plans to privatise prisons has upset prison workers, with stop work meetings and protests organised in the past few months. Earlier this month, prison officers refused to work overtime.
Former union boss John Robertson led the campaign against the Government’s power privatisation plans but since becoming Prisons Minister he supports prison privatisation.
Prison officers at Goulburn Jail will walk off the job today to rally against the NSW Government’s push to privatise jails, warning that the Goulburn facility could now be on the hit list.
The NSW Public Service Association (PSA) said the walkout follows Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham’s admissions this week that the sell-offs were an attempt to break the strength of their prison officers’ union …
PSA assistant general secretary Steve Turner said the Government has to come clean on its privatisation plans. “(Monday) Commissioner Woodham revealed planning was at an advanced stage for a 500 bed privately funded and operated prison in the Grafton shire,” Mr Turner said. “First Cessnock and Parklea, now Grafton, tomorrow it could be Goulburn – where will it stop?”
The debate over whether or not to privatize prisons in Australia’s New South Wales continues with Ministers opposed and the Corrections Chief in favour.
Today, the Australian state of New South Wales will officially open an $86million psychiatric hospital at Long Bay jail to treat more than 100 prisoners whose psychiatric problems have made them either unfit to enter a plea or meant that they were found not guilty on the grounds of mental illness.
A recent survey indicated that mental illness affects half of all female inmates at the jail and about 35% of the male inmates.
More than 100 prison officers have walked off the job at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail calling for an end to plans to privatise New South Wales, Australia, prisons.
At a rally in Sydney’s east, NSW Public Service Association assistant secretary Steve Turner said the state government was planning to sell off Parklea and Cessnock prisons, but privatisation would not stop there.
“This is about attacking you, about attacking your wages, about attacking your conditions, and most of all attacking your jobs,” Mr Turner said … A recent survey had found 69 per cent of people opposed the privatisation of prisons in NSW, he added.
Handing over the running of a jail to a private operator is radical. Jails are a bit more complex than buses or power stations. Still, if you’re interested, the state government has Parklea jail up for tender. It’s likely to be a good earner. Last year each prisoner cost the NSW government $73,000. According to the Department of Corrective Services, Parklea held 813 prisoners as at June 2008, 733 of whom were in maximum security. Most were awaiting trial. A reasonable estimate is that the five year contract to run Parklea will be worth about $300 million.
It seems the privatisation move comes from two pressures: the state government looking for some free cash, and the growth of the NSW prison population … The privatisation of Cessnock jail in the Hunter Valley is also underway. After planned expansions at Cessnock, Parklea and Cessnock will become the two major maximum security prisons in NSW, and each of them will be in private hands …
NSW law requires the arms to be displayed wherever the authority of the State is being represented. Therefore, you’ll find this coat of arms displayed on our most important buildings: our parliament, our police stations, our courts, and our prisons. The coat of arms at the gate of Parklea jail acknowledges the serious business of imprisonment. It tells us that the prison is owned by all of us, and that the people held in them are there because we as a society think this is the most appropriate way to punish and treat offenders. They are our responsibility. Imprisonment is serious business. To me, too serious for outsourcing to the private sector for the purpose of turning a profit.
Prisoner numbers in New South Wales jails have exceeded 10,000 and experts predict the NSW Government will breach its promise to slash reoffending rates.
Experts say Government forecasts of 300 extra prisoners each year means NSW will need to build a new jail every two years to handle the consequences of its hard-line “lock-’em-up” policies. At a cost of about $73,000 a prisoner a year, the Department of Corrective Services will have to find about $170 million extra each year from 2015 to run its jails, which by then will hold about 12,300 inmates.
Prison populations have been increasing in the Western world and other Australian states, but the problem is acute in NSW due to its tougher law-and-order policies. Changes to bail laws have led to an explosion in numbers of inmates awaiting trial (on remand). The director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Dr Don Weatherburn, said while tougher policies initially reduced crime significantly, they were now having less of an effect. “We seem to have reached the point where rising imprisonment rates are bringing diminishing marginal returns … (by) 2004 the rising rate of imprisonment in NSW exerted little if any measurable effect on property or violent crime,” he said. Experts say the failure to seriously tackle recidivism means the State Government will almost certainly break its commitment in the State Plan to reduce by 10 per cent the number of criminals who reoffend within two years of being convicted.
The New South Wales, Australia, government has confirmed it will privatise Sydney’s Parklea jail and the Hunter region’s Cessnock prison in a move that has further enraged prison officers.
About 1000 officers gathered outside NSW Parliament about two weeks ago to protest against the government plans, which they say will compromise the safety of staff and inmates. With the plans given the green light today, officers are already planning more industrial action, the NSW Public Services Association (PSA) said. The Government’s decision forms part of The Way Forward workplace reform strategies that were originally announced in August after overtime payments hit $43 million a year – more than double the budgeted $20 million.
The contracts for Parklea and Cessnock will be filed within the next seven to nine months, NSW Commissioner of Corrective Services Ron Woodham said. Mr Woodham assured staff that no one would lose their jobs under the reforms and added that prison officers working in contracted jails would not suffer increased risks.
But the PSA’s general secretary John Cahill, who received the news by phone from Mr Woodham, said the move posed serious safety concerns for prison staff and inmates. “There’s always pressure on them to cut costs and the main way they do this is by cutting staffing levels. (This) makes it more dangerous for the officers and more dangerous for the prisoners – one of the prison officer’s duties is to prevent attacks from one prisoner on another – and increases the likelihood of escapes so it’s a danger to the community generally.”
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Syscon Justice Systems produces Corrections Reporter in order to collect and share stories of interest for the corrections community around the world, for national, state and county corrections facilities and for our own in-house corrections professionals. The articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Syscon Justice Systems.
New South Wales, Australia, prison officers say an Easter weekend outbreak of violence at Parklea prison is a prelude to further trouble in the state’s jails if the State Government privatises prison operations. Story from the Canberra Times.
A company expected to bid for contracts to operate two jails in Australia has backed facilities in which inmates have keys to their cells and are on a first-name basis with their jailers. Gary Sturgess, research director of the U.K.-based Serco Group, will tell a New South Wales, Australia, parliamentary inquiry Friday that decency, not efficiency, is the main reason to privatize jails. 
A secret plan to move all prisoners from Cessnock Jail in New South Wales under the cover of darkness took place despite union officials slapping an emergency ban on the transfers. 
Prison officers at Goulburn Jail will 
More than 100 prison officers have walked off the job at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail calling for an end to plans to privatise New South Wales, Australia, prisons.