Rent-A-Screw
The NSW Government recently appointed a private security company to take over the staffing of Parklea Prison in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, according to grassroots legal group Australian Lawyers Alliance.
Alliance president Jnana Gumbert noted that GEO Group Australia, the security company appointed to run Parklea, “has a bad track record on human rights“.
She cited material from a recent Ombudsman’s report relating to the company’s management of the Melbourne Custody Centre outlining examples of prisoner mistreatment, including abuse and humiliation.
According to the Alliance a US Court recently fined this same custodial operator for the death of an inmate on their watch, resulting in a punitive damages settlement of more than $40 million.
Gumbert blamed corner-cutting and lack of proper staff training for some of the problems, but said the real difficulty was the need for the operator to maximise profit at the expense of prisoner rights.
“Everyone, including those incarcerated, should be able to enjoy basic human rights. We shouldn’t be inflicting additional cruelty inside the prison system,” she said, adding that if prisoners were not properly rehabilitated, they were more likely to reoffend.
“If we are serious about rehabilitating prisoners, that goal must be placed above profit margins and cost efficiency.”
Parklea Correctional Centre houses more than 800 remand and sentenced maximum and minimum security inmates. At present GEO Group Australia manages four correctional facilities: Fulham in Victoria, Junee in New South Wales, Wacol in Queensland and the Melbourne Custody Centre.
In a presentation to the NSW government’s recent inquiry into the privatisation of prisons, GEO managing director Pieter Bezuidenhout dismissed claims of cost-cutting and pointed out that public prisons are much more expensive to operate than private ones, have higher escape rates and a higher rate of assaults on officers.
Bezuidenhout said privatisation was not a sell-off of assets as claimed: “The prison remains the property of the state and the state oversees the delivery of the service that we provide.”
Sylvia Hale, Greens spokesperson on corrective services, condemned the announcement of the contract and questioned Corrective Services Minister John Robertson’s forecasts that it would save the state $60 million.
“The privatisation of prisons is wrong in principle. The awarding of the Parklea prison contract to GEO is equally wrong in practice,” Ms Hale said.
“The State consigns people to prison and it is the State that should be accountable for how prisoners are treated. It is shameful that a former Secretary of Unions NSW should promote a company such as GEO whose practice is to casualise its staff. Robertson knows that this is a sure-fire way to erode working conditions and undermine unions. ”
– BY JEREMY BROWN
