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

contracts with private prison companies should be released to the public without further delay.
6. Better costing for the building of prisons
The private prisons projects can provide information to the Department of Correctional Services
on the total cost of building a modern prison. The government, if given reliable data on the
amount of capital necessary, would be better equipped to make sound financing decisions. DCS
could then perhaps investigate alternative arrangements that would not compromise the state’s
leverage while monitoring performance of the private prison companies.
7. Investigate the impact of a prison’s size and location on the reintegration of offenders
The size and location of a prison has important implications for recidivism rates. The locations
for the two private prisons were chosen because the government already owned land there, and
not because they were actually within the communities from which many prisoners are drawn.
The BCC prison is the largest prison in South Africa, and the largest private prison in the world.
While this size will provide savings due to economies of scale, it is not clear what the impact will
be on recidivism rates. The DCS should encourage studies to be undertaken on the impact of
size and location of prisons on the rehabilitation of offenders. Ideally, the private prison
companies could demonstrate their commitment to the goals of DCS by providing funding for
such research.
Conclusion
Logan charges that "the goal of running prisons that are safe, secure, humane, efficient, and just
is too important to reserve to government."1 This could also be rewritten to claim that the goal of
running prisons is too important to leave open to the volatility and questionable motives of the
free market. The arguments for and against privatisation are usually motivated by various forms
of self-interest, and some are more concerned with a general distrust of government or a
general distaste for prisons than they are with private prisons.
In the United States, criminal justice policy decisions are influenced by a variety of special
interests which are not necessarily in line with the overall public interest. The introduction of
private prisons probably adds another tug in an already complicated and multi-directional tug of
war contest. The empirical evidence is not entirely convincing and the anecdotal evidence is not
entirely reliable, but the general consensus of those who are genuinely unbiased is that private
prisons are no worse or better than public prisons in the United States.
In Australia, the over-reaching power of the unions has been tempered and service delivery has
been improved in the public sector through the introduction of a system of competition for
management contracts. Australia has enjoyed the flexibility which is afforded by contracting for
management services only. This benefit has been protected by the fact that many Australian
private prisons avoided the trap of long-term public-private financing commitments. However,
the anecdotal evidence from Australia leads one to believe that the private prisons there have
failed to live up to their own standards. This may have more to do with the size and location of
private prisons. In Victoria, where some of the major problems occurred, the public prisons were
much smaller and more likely to be located in the inmates’ ‘hometown’ communities. The private
prisons were as much as ten times bigger than some of the public prisons, and were in more
remote isolated locations. Prison privatisation in Australia can be said to have had mixed results,
but at the very least it is focusing attention on an often overlooked and ignored public service.