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

interests of government agencies, just as it is not necessarily served by profit-seeking
corporations. Just as corporations seek market opportunities, politicians look for union support,
and bureaucrats work to increase their budgets. These activities are not intrinsically evil but
simple facts of incentives which motivate behaviour. As Logan explains:
"All prisons, both public and private, face challenges in the areas of authority,
legitimacy, procedural justice, accountability, liability, cost, security, safety,
corruptibility and so on. They face these challenges because of the nature of their
mission, not because of their incorporation as public or private entities."16
CHAPTER 4
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES
Private involvement in the prison system is not a recent development. During the 18th century,
most jails were operated by private individuals who managed the sale of prison labour and
debited each inmate for the costs of his incarceration. Modern prison privatisation is very
different from these earlier forms of contracting out prison services, but it has developed
differently in the three countries which have pioneered the use of the private sector in their
prison systems. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have implemented prison
privatisation programmes in different manners with varying degrees of success.
United States
In the US in the 1800s prison was a combination of labour and punishment. Inmates earned
their keep through trades such as shoemaking, weaving, tailoring, and chopping wood.
Entrepreneurs owned and operated prisons where labour was sold and prisoners charged for
their subsistence costs. The practice of solitary confinement was eventually discarded as the
production needs of the age brought about the assembly line. In California, the Prison Act of
1851 outlined a system in which private contractors would clothe, feed, and detain prisoners in
exchange for their labour. Prisons in many states were self-sufficient private enterprises, and
some even became profitable.
The Civil War hurt the prison-labour industry and most men were away fighting and there was
no market for the goods manufactured by prisoners. During the Reconstruction era in the South,
Jim Crow laws allowed the police to arrest able bodied men for ‘vagrancy’, or the crime of being
unemployed. Land-owners would then pay the fine or bail involved and the prisoner would be
‘freed’ but required to work off his debt. In 1871 the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the use of
prison labour was essentially equivalent to slave labour, and declared the practice illegal. In
New Jersey in 1877, unions recognized the threat which cheap prison labour posed to the
prospects of ‘free’ labour and rallied to outlaw prison labour. In 1887, Congress restricted the
interstate movement of prison-made goods and effectively put an end to the use of prison
labour.
During the 1900s, the involvement of non-profit agencies increased and eventually the
rehabilitation ideal became the standard mode of operation for prisons. By the 1970s, however,
the declaration that ‘nothing works’ started the movement away from rehabilitation programmes
as wasteful and ineffective. The development of contracting with private prison companies
coincided with the rise to power of the conservative Republican Party in the 1980s. The
emphasis in the Reagan era was on smaller government and less spending, which was
translated into less federal involvement and increased use of the private sector to provide public