Private prison gets a ratings tick
Private prison operator Serco is outperforming most public prisons in league tables which measure prison escapes, positive drug tests and rates of violence and rehabilitation.
The Corrections Department published the performance grades for New Zealand’s 17 prisons for the first time in a bid for greater transparency and accountability.
League tables for Private Prisons huh?
Does anyone reading this honestly believe that the stats give SERCO the clean slate they are claiming?
Because I have a lot of questions about this data and am curious as to why the Government haven’t released the raw numbers on these prisons.
Before we take the Government’s spin at face value, let’s note some issues…
-SERCO are high ranking as they have no staff in wings with prisoners due to low staffing level. This means they have really low staff assaults.
-HB Prison is poorly ranked due to 1 serious staff assault. Other than that they would be great.
-SERCO have mainly remand prisoners so do not have to do rehab for most prisoners. The few they do have they put on programs so it looks like they have lots happening but actually it is about 20 prisoners.
-SERCO is a brand new prison that is like no other in the country. It is the easiest prison to run because of design and tech in the place.
-On top of this the worst prisoners are removed to Auckland prison. Public prisons cant do this as Auckland refuse to take remand prisoners at the maxi as they are not sentenced.
-Finally the Government are spending several more millions of dollars on strengthening the cells in this brand new prison due to the Houdini escape. There is nothing wrong with the cells it is just that SERCO have no staff to monitor the prisoners at night. which means that this prisoner had many hours to smash metal board against concrete walls without anyone doing anything about it as there was no one monitoring this. In the public system you have at least 1 staff member in each wing to monitor this sort of thing. Instead of making SERCO staff the place properly they simply spend more tax payer money making it stronger so they can run with low staffing.
The so called stats that the Government have weighted to create the appearance of SERCO out performing public prisons are loaded dice to con the public.
By 2014, NZ will have the highest proportion of prisoners in private prisons than any other country on the planet. These private prisons are now forced labour camps where Prisoners are refused parole if they don’t work for slave wages.
What’s more disgusting is that ACC is a major investor in this corporate evil. The more NZers imprisoned for longer, the more returns for ACC. They have a vested profit motive in seeing NZers locked up.
Our hatred for prisoners whipped up by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and a crime porn media has left reason at the door.
We are building a bitter empire of despair where justice is second to making money.
Ugly. Very ugly.
