By Jack K. Assa
Papua
New Guinea is faced with a lot of problems. Corruption and increase crimes such
as rape, murder, robbery and frequent prison breakout are the hot topics
discussed in the mainstream and other social media networks these days. In
respond to the escalating problems, the O’Neil-Dion Government proposed some
solutions and two of them are the introduction of death penalty and privatizing
prisons. Prisons within the country are owned and operated by the state. The
frequent prison escapes around the country with the latest escape by convicted
bank robber and murder, William Kapris and his accomplice from the State Maximum
Prison at Bomana, wrote a new chapter in the history book of the Correctional
Institute Service (CIS). It also reflects how corrupt and vulnerable positions
of the state prisons and left the government under pressure to find solutions
to solve the problem. We need to know what prison privatisation is and its implications
if implemented.
Just as privatisation in
general can mean a number of things, prison privatisation is used to refer to
varying types and degrees of private sector involvement. In any type of prison
privatisation, the general format is that the state pays for the costs of
incarceration and the private sector provides various services. The most
limited form of privatisation is contracting, where a private entity is hired
to perform specific services. The prison system can use contracts with the
private sector to provide ancillary services such as catering, health care,
laundry and janitorial services. It is not uncommon for many government
departments to hire private companies to provide these non-core functions.
Private companies can also be hired to provide correctional services, such as
drug rehabilitation and job training.
The next level of
privatisation is contracting private entities to provide management services,
such as staffing, administration, and security. Just as a bank might hire a
security company to guard its assets, the prison service hires a company to
staff, train, and manage the personnel who work at the prison. Operational
privatisation refers to a private company being contracted to run an entire
prison, including both core and non-core functions. The government still makes
the policy for the prison, and is expected to monitor the performance of the
contractor, but the day to day business of running the prison is left to the
private company.
Privatizing prison has both
good and bad side of it. When the United States of America started switching
over to prisons run by private companies, the idea was that state governments
would save money, knowing the efficiencies of the free market. But according to a report in The New York Times,
in Arizona, a state that's been particularly aggressive about prison
privatization, they don't. In fact, inmates in private prisons can cost the government
as much as $1,600 more per year than inmates in state-run prisons. So it is
clear that private prisons aren't necessarily cheaper than their public-sector
counterparts.
Privatizing prison is seen as
a very costly exercise. In 2010, annual revenues
for two largest companies — Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO
Group — were nearly $3 billion. Implementing this proposed policy in PNG
means, it would cost the government millions of Kina, because they would have
to pay for the prisoners. In addition, companies
that house prisoners for profit have a perverse incentive to increase the
prison population by passing more laws, policing more heavily, sentencing more
harshly, and denying parole. Likewise, there’s no motivation to rehabilitate
prisoners; doing so is expensive, cuts into their profits, and decreases the
likelihood that any individual will be back in the prison system.
Prison ought to be about implementing public policy by punishing and
rehabilitating offenders, not profit. Abuse
of prisoners' rights is possible in government-run as well as private prisons,
but something seems perverse in the incentive structure that private prisons
impose not only on prison employees but on the direction of public policy;
making prisons a profitable industry encourages us to lock up more and more
people regardless of whether society is made safer in the long run -- even if,
in fact doing so will create a class of embittered, alienated citizens with
less access to the legitimate economy and a higher propensity for recidivism.
Privatizing prisons would see
private companies running prisons for profit and would have little interest in
rehabilitating the inmates. In comparison, state
prisons are much more likely than private prisons to offer programs that help
prisoners: psychological interventions, drug and alcohol counseling, coursework
towards high school or college diplomas, job training, etc. Prison is a
complex institution, and there are many important issues at stake. While they
are convicted criminals, inmates are still human beings that possess certain
unalienable rights. If prisons are privatized, the ability for effective
regulatory oversight diminishes. Private businesses, also, are in business to
make profit, not serve society. In the end, privatized governmental functions
always cut corners in the name of saving money, and that can be detrimental.
On the positive side of the
policy, many commentators argue that because private businesses do a better job
than the government in running businesses, they want prisons to be run by
private entity. If our prison
system were treated like a regular business venture and run by capable
companies, undoubtedly it would be run better than it is now. Private companies
would be held responsible and the prison "franchise" would be given
to another company if it was not successful. This is what motivates companies
to perform well- the desire for continued revenue.
Studies in the United Kingdom
by an independent think-tank known as Reform reveals that private firms are
better at running prisons than the public sector and all jails should be
subject to open competition. The study claimed that the Government would be
wrong to limit the role of private companies within prisons to small contracts
such as maintenance and catering, and other rehabilitation programs. Some 10
out of 12 privately managed prisons have lower reoffending rates among
offenders serving 12 months or more than comparable public sector prisons
according to Reform.
Many people will argue that private
prisons are fine as long as they keep the public safe from convicts. While,
there are no statistics to support outrage claims that prisoners who escaped
and on the run, are responsible for the rape, murder or robbery, mainstream
media within the country reported that many of these issues have always
involved an escapee. As such, applying private sector techniques will improve
the effectiveness of the prison management. It will also see a drop in prison
break-out, because private companies would not want to be held responsible and
lose contract.
In
conclusion, what is good for private prisons, in other words, is what is bad
for individuals, their families, their communities, and our country. The
government must not be lead by emotions to quickly make decisions that will
later bring much sever problems. Prison Privatization has both negative and
positive implications. It is recommended that the government establish a
task force to look into this proposed policy. Through the task force, wider
consultations and extensive research can be carried out into the experiences of
other countries that have privatized prisons currently running, as well as, those
that have been closed down. Subject to their findings, the government should
take an appropriate action, either to privatize prisons or to find other
solutions to ease the frequent prison breakout in the country.
Next week, we will look at how public goods and services
can be delivered effectively and efficiently through Public Private Partnership
(PPP) policy. Wish you God’s Blessings for now.
The writer
is a student living and studying in Indonesia. For comments and feedbacks, he
can be contacted on jackassa945@gmail.com (email) / +081273238217 (Mobile Phone).
Source; Sunday Chronicle 26th May 2013
Source; Sunday Chronicle 26th May 2013
