prison privatisation in south africa issues, challenges and ...

The intertwining of management issues with the financing deal affects accountability and
flexibility between the state and the consortium. The long term lease for the actual prison facility
is a separate transaction from the management contract for that prison, and is usually for a
much longer period of time. In spite of any monitoring or evaluation standard which may be
included in the management contract, the existence of a long-term lease as part of the financing
arrangements will compromise the ability of the state to terminate the contract. The
accountability mechanism which requires the private prison company to re-bid and compete for
the management contract is relegated to an automatic option to renew. As Harding points out,
"Deferred ownership of real estate and physical plant and long term financial commitments by
way of certificates of participation together constitute real if not insuperable barriers to state
policy reversal in this area."10
Monitoring
Accountability and the protection of the public interest are both contained in the challenge of
appropriate monitoring mechanisms. If prison systems can be effectively monitored then many
of the more contentious issues surrounding prison privatisation will fall away.
The key question for monitoring is to define the successful operation of a prison and to devise
standards for measuring that success. One might expect a successful prison to be one which
achieves the rehabilitation of offenders and the reduction of recidivism. However these are
goals which are difficult to quantify and benchmark. Instead of successful rehabilitation, private
prison contracts tend to list performance objectives which minimise harm or wrongdoing in the
prison. As one author observed:
"The era of the development of private prisons has coincided with the decline of the
‘rehabilitation ideal’ within prisons. In such a penal climate, private firms can hardly
be expected to achieve overall rehabilitation objectives that have been largely
discarded by the public sector."11
It is much easier to quantify and measure the number of incidents of assault and the amount of
contraband which has been confiscated. It is much more difficult to measure the likelihood that a
prisoner will become a productive member of society upon his or her release. Because the
performance standards applied to private prison companies are included in the contract, they
are also subject to the same negotiating process as other aspects such as fee structures and
termination clauses. This leads the performance standards to represent more of a deal or
compromise between the two parties than a representation of the public interest.
The private prison companies are usually financially penalised for failing to meet the
performance objectives in their contracts. Thus, there is an added incentive to make sure the
prison is run as smoothly as possible with minimal interruption or risk. Programs such as job
training and education, in some respects, could make the management task more complicated
and difficult as prisoners must be supervised and transported to different locations.
Sometimes the private prison contract will attempt to encourage rehabilitation by requiring that a
certain number of hours of job training or other programs are available. However, the
companies are neither measured nor rewarded for the success of the rehabilitation programs. In
this way, the private prison companies are motivated to concentrate on security and detention
and simply go through the motions with regards to the actual rehabilitation of the inmates. As a
result, the evaluation criteria used in private prison contracts are serving to accelerate the trend