Private prisons won’t solve corrections issues
Placing a greater emphasis on private management of prisons won’t make prisons any easier or cheaper to run, says Labour law and order spokesperson Clayton Cosgrove.
“The Government says its decision to go down the private management track is based on philosophy, but what it is actually saying is that Corrections issues are so difficult to handle that it would rather absolve itself of responsibility wherever it can,” he said.
Clayton Cosgrove said it was revealing that the issue of private prisons was discussed by the Cabinet today.
“There is no urgency about such a move, but clearly the Government hoped that a debate on private prisons would divert public attention from the mess Corrections Minister Judith Collins has made of the Auditor-General’s parole report. When you have got egg over your face, as Judith Collins has, you would rather people were looking at something else, not at you.
Clayton Cosgrove said overseas experience, in Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, had shown “huge flaws” in private prison systems, ranging from bribery, corruption, increased violence and increased drug abuse to avoidable suicides.
“There is certainly no evidence in New Zealand to suggest private prisons can be run any more cheaply. The last time there was such an experiment, at the Auckland remand centre, the costs per inmate were less than the average per inmate in a state prison, but that was simply because the average cost in a state prison included the large extra costs associated with maximum security.”
Clayton Cosgrove said that National claimed Labour’s objections to private prisons were ideological. “The reverse is actually true. National is ideologically committed to private prisons, no matter that they will be foreign-owned when logic tells us that running prisons should be a core business and responsibility of the state.
“National’s plan will also have large implications as far as Corrections jobs are concerned, and it underlines yet again how little real commitment the Government has to preserving jobs for New Zealanders.”
