HON GIZ WATSON (North Metropolitan) [3.43 pm]: The Greens (WA) do not support this Bill. To tackle the politics of this Bill first, the Greens (WA) interpret this move to privatise prisons as creating a distance between the Government and the current problems in our prison system. One need look only at the ongoing situation at Casuarina, which has been locked down for the last 10 months. The prison population in this State is steadily going through the roof. The prison population in Australia grew from 60 per 100 000 persons in 1984 to almost 100 per 100 000 persons in 1995. The number of people in prison in Western Australia has increased by 60 per cent over the past three years, which is an extraordinary rate. Various reasons can be cited for that increase. However, this has created a crisis in our prisons with overcrowding, riots and the like. The politics behind this move to have the private sector take charge of the prisons is a tried and true method of distancing the Government from problems.
The other major concern about this Bill is that it sets a course of action for the long term; that is, the contract proposed for the Wooroloo South Prison will be a 20-year contract, with an option to renew. Therefore, it sets a course which distances the Government from any other chances of dealing with wrongdoing and criminal activity apart from imprisonment. The chances of the Government being realistic about any attempts at prison reform, or alternative methods of dealing with offenders to keep them out of prison, will be less likely if the Government has signed a 20-year contract with a private company. Sitting suspended from 3.46 to 4.00 pm [Questions without notice taken.]
Hon GIZ WATSON: One of the problems with the move towards having private prisons in this State is that it will set in place a course that will determine the nature of justice in this State for a considerable time, and it will particularly be an impediment to the making of other more future-looking penal reforms. I will quote from a copy of a letter that was sent to me by the Social Responsibilities Commission, Anglican Province of Western Australia. The letter is addressed to the Premier and is dated 30 June 1998, and it concerns the proposed tender to provide privately operated prison facilities at Wooroloo. The letter raises the following point on the subject of obstruction to penal reform -
. . . one crucial consideration needs to remain at the forefront of the debate in relation to these proposed changes. Once the government proceeds down the path of privatisation, it severely restricts its own ability to initiate comprehensive reform in the prison system. If it becomes apparent in the future that the privatised prisons are not having an impact in the problem areas identified, it will be substantially more difficult for the government to institute fundamental change because it will be restricted by:
contractual obligations owed to the private operator; and
its lack of involvement in the day to day running of the prisons.
These problems are exacerbated by the fact that in order to make the privatisation process profitable for the private sector provider, the government is required to enter into contracts with reasonably lengthy terms. This in turn means that the government may find itself locked into an agreement under which it is unable to institute necessary reform, if the private service provider is complying with the letter of the agreement.
And as I said before, the contract with Corrections Corporation of Australia will be for 20 years, with an option to renew.
The danger that is inherent in the politics of distancing the Government from problems in the penal system and from the problem of managing the social manifestations of a society that is in trouble - namely, increasing incarceration and crime rates - is that Governments of all shades will continue to up the ante in their approach of getting tough on crime. This approach is part of the current Government's agenda, and the Labor Party is also guilty on some occasions of whipping up a political approach to crime in our community. The Government is proposing that this State go down the route of the justice system in the United States. In my opinion, that is an appalling model to follow, because in that country, re-election campaigns are fuelled and run on issues of fear, anger and retribution that are aimed at certain sectors of the community and are very much combined with the thriving prison industry in that country, which is so confident of its political influence that it is building jails ahead of the demand for prisoners to fill them. It worries me that this State is proposing to head down a similar path. This decision to go down the path of privatising prisons should not be made in ignorance of the big picture that is involved with the prison industrial complex.
In preparing myself for this Bill, I examined how the American model of private prisons developed, and I came across an interesting article from the Prison Activist Resource Center in Berkeley, California. The article is entitled "The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy" and is written by Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans. We should not kid ourselves that the interests that we are now inviting into this State are not exactly the companies that are described in this article. Corrections Corporation of Australia, which is a subsidiary of Corrections Corporation of America, is very much part of a global push for an expansion of the prison industry. The article states under the heading "Prisons Are Big Business" that -
Like the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime. Not so long ago, communism was "the enemy" and communists were demonised as a way of justifying gargantuan military expenditures. Now, fear of crime and the demonisation of criminals serve a similar ideological purpose: to justify the use of tax dollars for the repression and incarceration of a growing percentage of our population . . .
In reality, however, most of the "criminals" we lock up are poor people who commit non-violent crimes out of economic need.
I argue that that is as applicable to Western Australia as it is to America. I will not go through this article in depth, but it does make a number of other points which are equally relevant to Western Australia. One is the growing disproportionate representation of black or non-Caucasian inmates in prisons. The situation in the United States is that African Americans have an arrest rate that is five times higher than that of whites, yet whites and African Americans use drugs at about the same rate. That same situation occurs in this State where Aboriginal people are grossly over-represented in the prison population.
As this State is going down the path of establishing private prisons, it may head in the same direction as California. It currently spends more on prisons than on higher education, and over the past decade it has built 19 prisons and only one branch university. Such is the power of the prison industrial complex.
I now refer to some of the arguments put to the Greens (WA) in favour of privatisation of prisons. It has been said that the competition will result in a more innovative prison system and will break up the current prison culture. It has been argued that a privately-operated prison is no different from a privately-operated hospital, school or other institution. I challenge that proposition. The fundamental difference between private prisons and other private institutions is that in the prisons there are no customers.
Hon Derrick Tomlinson: Yes there are.
Hon GIZ WATSON: No there are not, and I will explain that. The comparison does not hold up and I challenge the theory that competition in the prison system will produce a better quality service and reduce costs. I also question that in a general sense; certainly prisons do not have clients in the same way that hospitals have clients who can go elsewhere if they are not satisfied with the service provided. That pressure can be applied to private hospitals and private schools. In the case of prisons, the State Government is the client and prisoners are merely a commodity in this arrangement. It is not accurate to say that private prisons are the same as private hospitals or private schools. They are fundamentally different.
Another argument put forward is that the increased competition will have a beneficial effect on cost and service delivery. What kind of competition is referred to? The company that is the preferred tenderer for the first private prison in Western Australia is Corrections Corporation of Australia. Its parent company, Corrections Corporation of America, holds 67 per cent of the private prison market in the US, in conjunction with Wackenhut. It is proposed that the same tenderer will have the contract for court security and custodial services in WA. We are well on the way to establishing a monopoly for this company in Western Australia.
I raise now the issue of commercial confidentiality. The minister has made much of the fact that the contract to be signed with CCA will be open, readily available and aboveboard. If the examples of existing private contracts in Victoria and Queensland are anything to go by, this openness and accountability will not be full and complete. Hon Peter Foss: Are you questioning me?
Hon GIZ WATSON: Yes, I probably am. I will refer to some problems which have occurred in prisons in Queensland and Victoria. I will use the example of the Arthur Gorrie prison in Queensland. I understand it is not a CCA prison. It had an issue with an employee, a Mr Jarvis, and the Queensland District Court awarded him nearly $200 000. The review states this happened -
. . . after the judge found that the prison had been understaffed and failed to provide adequate supervision and support for its prison officers. The prison had deliberately pursued a hiring policy excluding staff with previous public prison experience which led to a lack of experience within Arthur Gorrie and, at least for Mr Jarvis, no assistance on how to handle difficult situations.
That is one example of how the policies of hiring staff can leave the system with problems. I believe in his previous comments Hon John Halden mentioned some of the problems prisons in the United States have had with prisoners escaping, which has identified the fact that a lack of staff training is a key factor.
In arguments about increased competition, the recent situation of private prisons in the United Kingdom is used as an example of how privatisation has worked to improve competition and standards. I will refer to an account of a study of the United Kingdom prison system prepared by Bottomley and James titled "Evaluating Private Prisons: Comparisons, Competition and Cross-fertilisation". It was published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology in 1997. It was claimed in the United Kingdom that the so-called "cross-fertilisation" of public and private prisons had led to an improvement all round the prison systems and that the introduction of private prisons had raised the standard of the public prisons. Bottomley and James cautioned against assuming that the introduction of private prisons was the direct cause of the increased performance of the public prison system in the United Kingdom. They pointed to the particular difficulties involved in evaluating such a cause and effect. This account cites the Bottomley and James report and states -
[The] research task facing criminologists would not only involve the evaluation of the performance of a jurisdiction's entire prison system before, during and after the introduction of private sector management of prisons, but also require them to be able to attribute any changes directly to the introduction of private sector management. In practice, researchers are faced with very imperfect environments for testing this hypothesis.
The account concluded that Bottomley and James believed that -
. . . it had been the introduction of competition and certain management practices into the prison system that had encouraged innovations across the system, not the introduction of privatisation in itself.
Hon Peter Foss: Say that again.
Hon GIZ WATSON: It states that it had been the introduction of competition and certain management practices into the prison systems that encouraged innovations across the system, not the introduction of privatisation itself.
Hon Peter Foss: I think we would all agree with that wholeheartedly. It is quite right.
Hon GIZ WATSON: I want to speak about the preferred tenderer, Corrections Corporation of Australia. It is the largest prison operator in the United States, as I think I mentioned earlier. Currently, it runs 41 of the 91 prison contracts in the United States. It is a very profitable business. In 1995, Corrections Corporation of America was one of the 10 best performers on the New York Stock Exchange. Much has been made of the fact that Corrections Corporation of Australia is a separate entity, but it is my understanding that one member - if not more - of the board of Corrections Corporation of America is also on the board of its Australian organisation. There are direct links.
The restriction of information available to the public and researchers has been raised in relation to the operation of CCA in Queensland. A researcher, Paul Moyle, was unable to obtain information under the freedom of information legislation and he and other researchers had a defamation suit filed against them, to restrict public debate and the information available. This is the same organisation we are inviting to this State.
The claim is made that the privatisation of prisons will make the provision of prison services cheaper. I believe we have already had examples in this debate where the standard of services has not been kept up in private prisons. If we are to provide a cheaper service than that currently being offered by the public sector, what will be reduced in terms of the current outlays? Will it be food, clothing, security, health, education or staffing cuts, or will more reliance be placed on surveillance devices?
Hon Peter Foss: How about waste?
Hon GIZ WATSON: We have seen those things in private prisons.
Hon Derrick Tomlinson: That is not necessarily a bad thing. You have people to secure them, not to watch them.
Hon GIZ WATSON: That is an interesting matter. From my conversations with people involved in the prison system, I know that in terms of maintaining prisoners, any sense of communication and connection prisoners have with the greater community - even the interaction between prison guards and inmates - is very important.
Hon Peter Foss: That is what the crown prisons are doing more of because the officers are used as teachers; instead of standing around watching, they do something. Hon Derrick Tomlinson: I strongly suggest you go to one of the CCA prisons.
Hon GIZ WATSON: I have.
Hon Derrick Tomlinson: Did you go to the women's prison?
Hon GIZ WATSON: No, I went to the Borallon facility.
Hon Peter Foss: What did you think of it?
Hon GIZ WATSON: I found it interesting, but it did not answer all my questions.
Hon Peter Foss: Did it strike you as being a place which was more frightening and more remote than a public prison?
Hon GIZ WATSON: It is a little hard to say, and it depends on the public prison it is being compared with.
Hon Peter Foss: Pick any public prison.
Hon GIZ WATSON: The use of subsidised prison labour - in fact, in my opinion, it is not far off slavery - has also been raised. Prison populations are able to produce goods at an exceedingly low rate. I understand that in the United States private prisons have supplied labour at such low rates that local industries have been put out of business.
I refer to an article in The Australian of Monday, 26 July 1999, about an inquest into the death of five inmates at Port Phillip Prison - one of Victoria's three private jails. That article states -
People at the inquest were floored. Prison officer Richard Judge was testifying at the coronial inquiry into the deaths of five inmates at Port Phillip, one of Victoria's three private jails, when he explained he didn't have any experience. He hadn't expected to be a prison officer. He had wanted to be a dog handler, he said, but there weren't any positions available.
When the inquest resumes today, the inexperienced police officers will be replaced by the top dogs of the system - from Victoria Corrective Service Commissioner Penny Armytage to the Department of Justice official who oversaw the introduction of private prisons, Tony Wilson, who is expected to be asked about the designed of Port Phillip.
One of the most fundamental aspects of the Greens' opposition to the privatisation of prisons is the ethical question of relinquishing of the State's responsibility for prisoners to private corporations to be operated in a profit-making exercise. I refer to a media release dated 22 June issued by the Social Responsibilities Commission of the Anglican Province of Western Australia. The Anglican Social Responsibilities Commission was established by resolution of the Synod of the Diocese of Perth in 1983 to prepare, promote and communicate effective material on issues of social concern. Indeed, the churches have been very vocal in their opposition to private prisons in this State. The media release states -
"This issue was debated at the (Dioceses of Perth) Anglican Synod in October 1998 and the church as a whole adopted a resolution opposing private prisons. There is nothing in the Democrats proposal which would change our position on that resolution."
"If the State chooses to deprive somebody of their liberty, then the State must take full responsibility for their custody. It is not a function which can be handed over to others. It is also ethically dubious to allow an organisation to make a profit out of a custodial function."
"In the submission to the Premier last year we detailed our opposition to private prisons. Our concerns include the lack of accountability to the public, obstruction to penal reform, and the ability or willingness of a private operator to fulfil our international human rights obligations. We also question how a private company's directors will fulfil their dual obligations to proper prison management and returning a profit to shareholders."
"Experience in other States indicates that the public is not able to properly scrutinise the contracts entered into by governments with private prison operators. This has become an ever-increasing trend in privatisation of all kinds and is not acceptable when measured against standards of openness and accountability required of government. This is of particular concern when the well-being of people deprived of their liberty is at stake."
I can only agree that this is the fundamental issue relating to the decision that this Parliament is making to hand over the ethical and moral responsibility for incarcerated persons to a private operator. I cannot support it. I implore members to consider that we are not talking about the same scenario as private hospitals, schools or whatever one wishes to talk about; we are talking about the fundamental role of the State.
Debate adjourned, pursuant to standing orders.
Resumed from 28 October.
HON GIZ WATSON (North Metropolitan) [4.21 pm]: When I spoke the week before last on this matter, and earlier on the Court Security and Custodial Services Bill, I raised the issue of a private organisation and private employees having the right to use "legitimate force". As I said, in the opinion of not only me but also others, it is crucial that control of the right to use legitimate force remain within the State rather than be handed over to private enterprise.
In an article on private prisons in Incite, the University of Western Australia's political science department's magazine, Merinda Logie says -
Prison officers similarly to police; rely on direct force, amounting to a significant delegation of the state's "monopoly of legitimate use of force". In particular they have extensive discretionary power, the exercise of which can reflect a systematic policy or style, with profound effects on prisoners. Alongside the formal disciplinary system, there also exists an informal or 'shadow' system involving sanctions 'in the interests of good order and discipline' - segregation, confinements, withdrawal of privileges, transfers, disciplinary reports, etc. . . . argues that this quasi-judicial role exercised by private employees contradicts the principle that punishment has to be determined by courts representing the state and only administered by private entities. The use of discretion in these matters is very difficult to subject to external scrutiny in any prison, and may be merely complicated by vested interests in private facilities and the conflicts between regulators and the independent operators.
The next item I move on to is the assertion raised in this debate by the Australian Democrats that the Government would go ahead and privatise prisons anyway. The Democrats used that assertion as the basis for facilitating the Government's agenda of creating private prisons in this State. The Democrats contended that if they did not cooperate with the Government by providing a safety valve in the form of an inspector, the Government nevertheless would privatise prisons. I received two legal opinions on this matter, both of which contradict that view. One opinion, from the Society of Labor Lawyers (WA) in a letter sent to Hon Helen Hodgson on 23 July, reads -
Re: Privatisation of Prisons
Thank you for your (undated) letter explaining the position your party has adopted in relation to the above issue.
We welcome your acknowledgement that there are concerns about the morality of the proposal to privatise state prisons and we urge the Australian Democrats to reconsider its position.
It appears that this position is predicated entirely on the assumption that the Government does not need to amend the Prisons Act in order to proceed with privatisation of prisons, and the South Australian experience is cited in support of this assumption.
In our view, this assumption is incorrect.
An examination of the South Australian legislation, the Correctional Services Act 1982 (SA), reveals that it differs markedly from the WA Prisons Act.
The WA Prisons Act is geared entirely toward prisons being run by the Government.
Prison officers are appointed by the Minister on the recommendation of the Public Service Commission. The Act sets forth very onerous obligations and responsibilities on officers and gives them extensive powers, such as the power of search and even to shoot people in certain circumstances. These powers must be exercised in the public interest. There are also numerous rights of appeal and complex disciplinary procedures contained in the Act.
In the absence of amendments to the Prisons Act, a private prison in WA would have to be staffed by public officers. It is difficult to see how public officers, with their considerable public powers and responsibilities, could be supervised and disciplined by private operators who are not publicly accountable, and whose sole motivation is profit-making.
The South Australian legislation does not contain similar provisions to the WA legislation. It is, quite clearly, lacking the very strong underlying assumption contained in the WA legislation, that prisons will be managed by the Government. There are, consequently, not the same impediments to the establishment of private prisons in South Australia as there are here.
If you have obtained legal advice to the contrary, we would be pleased to receive a copy of it.
The letter goes on to say -
. . . we urge you to reconsider your position, based as it is upon incorrect information.
I then sought a further legal opinion which basically said the same thing. However, I wish to mention a couple of specific sections of the Prisons Act which were pointed out to me in the second legal opinion from Greg McIntyre of 26 June 1999 which reads -
An examination of the Prisons Act 1981 suggests that it would not be possible to manage a prison under the law as it presently stands with the use of personnel other than persons appointed pursuant to the Prisons Act and under the Public Sector Management Act 1994.
Section 6 of the Prisons Act provides that the responsibility for administration of the Act is vested in the Minister, persons employed by the Minister on the recommendation of the Public Service Commissioner, and officers employed under the Public Sector Management Act 1994, including a Chief Executive Officer and an Executive Director (Corrective Services).
Section 8 provides that the Chief Executive Officer may only delegate his powers to another officer.
I will not read the entire advice but basically he notes about 10 further sections under the current Prisons Act that will be problematic unless the amendments that we are currently debating in this place are passed.
Therefore, the argument that this will happen anyway is based on a wrong assumption and is severely flawed. In fact, if the Democrats had stood their ground on this, we would not be contemplating locking this State into private prisons for at least the next 20 years. The trade-off in this whole equation is that we will have an independent inspectorate. Indeed, everyone to whom I have spoken on this issue and who is involved with prisons and prison justice accepts that the idea of an independent inspectorate is welcome and long overdue. However, in this case it is merely a window-dressing for the Government to pursue its agenda of privatisation. It has not been accepted by anyone with whom I have consulted that this in any way makes acceptable the move to private prisons in this State. In fact, this State needs an inquiry into the prison system. A full public inquiry is about the only thing that would get to the bottom of the dire situation of overcrowding and appalling conditions in our prisons. Numerous other watchdog bodies which have been set up in this State have failed to provide accountability and openness; that is, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Public Sector Standards Commission. I note that we have not seen an ombudsman's report on the prisons in this State and somehow it has not appeared in the public arena. I question what faith we will have that the system which is established under a private inspectorate will deliver the goods and will be resourced in a way that will allow it to operate as a truly independent inspectorate.
Concerns have been raised by social justice groups about the impact of privatisation on their accessibility to the prison system in terms of looking after prisoners' concerns and ensuring that prisons are administered fairly. I have received a letter from the Social Responsibilities Commission of the Western Australian Province of the Anglican Church of Australia which is dated 1 July 1991, but I will not go into it in great detail. In part it states -
In particular it is concerned about the impact of management contracting on the role in the prison system of prison chaplains and other community-based providers of prisoner support services.
It goes on to state in some detail that it has concerns with the private system and that it would have even less access to the prison system than it does at this point.
It was noted as recently as the past week, but perhaps not yet in debate, that the new Victorian Government is doing all it can to get out of the contracts into which the former Government entered with the private providers for the prisons. It has recognised that the privatisation of prisons has not been a success, and it is doing all it can to get out of those contracts. If we enter into a 20-year contract in this State, we will be locking ourselves into a contract which we will not get out of easily.
In conclusion, as opposed to private prisons, we would like to see in this State a commitment to restorative justice; a tackling of the underlying problems of poverty, drugs and social alienation that are filling our jails; a true commitment to reducing recidivism; and an investment in the future which is not about privatising prisons.