Countries in nearly every region of the world are continuing to turn to a U.S.-led model of prison privatisation despite mounting evidence that such systems are often neither cost-efficient nor able to provide adequate services.

The Corrections Corporation of America says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned. Credit: Bigstock

New data released Tuesday notes that nearly a dozen countries – in North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific – are today integrating private, for-profit prisons into their penal systems. Yet the country where that model was pioneered, the United States, is currently beginning a nationwide push to decrease its incarcerated population, leading to a growth industry in exporting corporate prison knowhow.

Increased interest internationally has “helped private U.S. prison companies diversify their investments at a time when America’s prison population growth has stalled,” a new report, released by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, states.

“For example, 14 percent of the revenue for America’s second largest private prison company, the Geo Group, came from international services in fiscal year 2012.”

The growth in global interest in prison privatisation has also been a boon for British companies, particularly G4S and Serco.

All of these companies “have thrived off of the expanded privatization of prisons, immigration detention systems, and other governmental services,” the report states, “while often failing to deliver on the services that were promised.”

Indeed, critics have long accused for-profit prison companies, with explicit requirements to cut costs, of poorer services and conditions than publically run penal systems (see here and here). An attempt by the Israeli government to open a private prison in 2009 was blocked by that country’s Supreme Court, which warned that such a transfer of responsibility would lead to “harsh and grave damage to the basic human rights of prisoners”.

Private prison companies tend to explain the rationale for their operations in terms of efficiency of service. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a founder of the sector in the early 1980s and still the United States’ largest operator of private prisons, says it “combine[s] the efficiency and effectiveness of business with the standards, regulation and oversight of government … at less than it costs public agencies to operate.”

The CCA says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned.

Yet increasingly, watchdog groups and governments have called into question this issue of cost-effectiveness. In 2010, for instance, a government oversight office for the state of Arizona found that for-profit prisons were costing the state some 16 percent more than public facilities.

Last month, an unusual report by the hacker-activist group Anonymous warned that CCA was no longer a good investment.

Success stories

Countries currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans include Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Thailand. Yet the sector remains dominated by developed countries, the new Sentencing Project report notes, particularly English-speaking nations.

While the United States continues to hold the largest number of prisoners in private facilities (around 131,000 in 2011), this is largely because the country also detains by far the largest number of people (1.5 million) – some quarter of the world’s incarcerated population.

Still, several other countries have given over a far larger portion of their penal systems to private corporations. According to the most recent data, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom each holds between 10 and 20 percent of their prisoners in private prisons.

These figures are far higher for immigrant detention, an area in which prison corporations have particularly excelled. The United Kingdom, for instance, houses roughly three-quarters of those suspected of immigration-related infractions in privately run detention centres, while Australia has entirely privatised its immigrant-detention system.

Meanwhile, these numbers appear to be having something of a cyclical effect, with greater penetration by private detention companies leading to further interest by other countries.

“Because there are these large, developed countries that have taken this step, that naturally creates interest in other countries,” Cody Mason, author of the new report and a consultant to the Sentencing Project, told IPS.

“These companies, in the United States and in other countries, will regularly travel around and bring members of Congress and Parliament into their facilities, suggesting that their approach will solve their problems. They promote themselves as a great way to deal with overcrowding, substandard services and rising prison costs.”

He continues: “Any country that sees privatisation being adopted by other countries and hears these stories – it’s pretty natural they’ll turn to that approach.”

New markets

Here in the United States, prison overcrowding has become a massive problem over the course of a three-decade “tough on crime” push by legislators. Some U.S. prison systems are currently overbooked by 40 percent, leading to accusations of mass rights infringements.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made what many are seeing as a historic announcement, directing the federal Department of Justice to begin taking multiple steps to bring down the incarcerated population. Additional moves are afoot in the U.S. Congress to put in place broader, permanent changes to the way the country’s criminal justice system functions.

Such steps may be bringing about a bipartisan end to the “tough on crime” era, but they are undoubtedly rattling the private prison companies based in the United States. While it is not yet clear how these companies’ lobbying efforts may strengthen amidst the new push, Cody Mason writes that for-profit prison companies here have spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions.

Those lobbying efforts have focused particularly on a pending overhaul of the country’s immigration system. Mason’s report notes that private prison companies have “a history of contributing to supporters of harsh immigration detention laws”.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Yet new legislation that has passed the Senate but is currently in limbo in the House of Representatives would almost certainly bring about significant changes to this approach.

“There is sure to be a lobbying response to these issues, especially depending on what happens with the immigration bill – these companies will have a lot of interest in what happens with that,” Mason says.

“Alongside any lobbying, however, they are also looking at new areas of business, and part of that is other countries into which they can expand.”

The United Nations is increasingly hiring Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) for its missions across the world, raising concerns over the use of firms known for participation in human rights abuses, as well as an overall lack of accountability structures governing these contractors within the U.N. system.

Between 2009 and 2010 alone, the U.N. increased its use of private security services by 73 percent (from 44 million to 76 million dollars), according to a new report by the independent policy watchdog Global Policy Forum (GPF).

Among other services, these firms provided armed and unarmed guards, convoy security, risk assessment and security training to the U.N.

In specific field missions, for which there is more data than the U.N. as a whole, increases in outsourcing become even more stark, says the author of the report, Lou Pingeot, programme coordinator at GPF.

“When you look at 2006 to 2011, use of PMSCs in field missions have increased by 250 percent,” Pingeot told IPS.

The report, titled “Dangerous Partnership” and launched in New York on Tuesday, is based on Pingeot’s extensive research into available records of annual procurement by U.N. agencies, as well as on- and off-the-record interviews with U.N. staff across various agencies and departments.

It chronicles a build-up in the use of PMSCs within the U.N. starting in the 1990s with the peacekeeping missions in Somalia, the Balkans and Sierra Leone.

The focus on security and protection of U.N. premises increased in the wake of 9/11 and the 2004 bombing of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq, the report argues, followed by the creation of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (DSS) in 2005. The latter aims to institutionalise security coordination among U.N. agencies through the establishment of an Inter-Agency Security Management Network.

While Pingeot is eager to stress that the numbers used in her research on PMSCs show trends based on imperfect data, they nevertheless illustrate a direction the U.N. is heading in that also worries many of her interviewees, she said, though most are uncomfortable voicing their concerns publicly.

One reason for concern over increased use of PMSCs is the absence of guidelines and frameworks to govern the outsourcing of U.N. tasks to private firms, especially those working in conflict zones.

Another concern is the possible clash between U.N. values and those of employees in private security firms, who display a “culture of superiority” and “propensity for the use of violence”, according to the report, which also examined WikiLeaks cables and media coverage of these firms.

While discussion on the subject within the U.N has been minimal at best, a 2002 report by the secretary-general on U.N. outsourcing practices, cited in “Dangerous Partnership”, acknowledged that outsourced activities “may compromise the safety and security of UN staff ,” and called on offices which outsourced security services to replace contractors with U.N. personnel.

Among the companies the U.N. has recently hired are DynCorp, a U.S. firm that became widely known for its involvement in a sex trafficking scandal during the U.N. mission in Bosnia in the 1990s – a story that’s since made its way back into the media through the 2010 film “The Whistleblower.”

The company also operated covert U.S. “rendition” flights to secret prisons across the world, as revealed in a 2011 court case between DynCorp and another private contractor first reported on by the Associated Press.

Another stand-out on the list of U.N. contractors is British security giant G4S, which received a 14-million-dollar U.N. contract for mine clearing and provides security services to the U.S. military in Iraq. In Britain, the company has been scrutinised for its questionable treatment of migrants while operating a number of migrant detention centres and is currently in the running for a 1.5-billion-pound contract to operate police services in two counties in the U.K.

The main argument for using private contractors is cost-saving, with major players like the U.S. and the U.K. pushing the U.N. to streamline its operations by outsourcing more tasks to PMSCs.

It’s a muddy argument at best, says Pingeot, who in her roughly two years of research was not able to find a serious comparative study on the financial benefits of outsourcing U.N. security services. In addition, the practice of issuing no-bid contracts cuts out any financial benefit that price competition may have had.

“You also don’t count externalities, including the cost to put a proper review mechanism into place for an industry that’s currently self-regulating and thus unaccountable,” she said.

“For me, the most astounding aspect of the report is how the U.N. has over 20 years avoided discussion on the topic,” James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, told IPS.

“How can you year after year bring out reports and talk about the security of U.N. staff and not mention this? The emperor has no clothes.”

One aspect that has stifled real discussion is the influence two of the biggest players within the U.N., the U.K and the U.S. governments, he said, both of whom are major clients of these firms, rendering any discussion dead on arrival.

The industry, in turn, makes use of this access to their governments to secure support on bids within the U.N., which are not the most lucrative financially but lend prestige and increase the companies’ image, according to Pingeot’s research.

The cozy relationship between member states and private contractors also fuels “bunkerizations”, the report finds, as the increased use of PMSCs and their involvement in determining U.N. and national policy means that countries end up with an increasing “need” for security.

“It’s self-perpetuation of the industry,” Pingeot said.

Responding to requests for comment on the report, the spokesperson for U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement Tuesday that the U.N. system has been working on a draft decision-making and accountability framework for the use of armed private security companies, and that such a draft was approved by the Inter Agency Security Management Network in June 2012.

The draft’s approval was news to Pingeot, who says it’s been on the table for two years with little moving on the matter. “We obviously forced their hand,” she said in response to the statement following her presentation of the report at the U.N. Church Centre.

“But it could still take years for such guidelines to be approved,” she adds. More importantly, it misses the point of the report, “Which is that what’s needed is a broad reassessment of the U.N.’s relationship and contracts with all of these organisations, not just those providing security.

“We’re way past the time for small reforms and guidelines like this. We’re past fig leaves.”