THIS REVOLTING TRADE IN HUMAN LIVES IS AN INCENTIVE TO LOCK PEOPLE UP

The Inmate Population Has Soared Since Britain Started Running
Prisons for Profit. Little Wonder Lobbyists Want Titan Jails

It's a staggering case; more staggering still that it has scarcely
been mentioned on this side of the ocean. Last week two judges in
Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2,000 children in
exchange for bribes from private prison companies.

Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for
offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A
15-year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a
spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal.
Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a
vacant building. He gave a 14-year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in
prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend
slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6m by companies belonging to the
Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails. This
is what happens when public services are run for profit.

It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of
the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and
the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of
prisoners keeps rising.

The US is more corrupt than the UK, but it is also more transparent.
There the lobbyists demanding and receiving changes to judicial
policy might be exposed, and corrupt officials identified and
prosecuted. The UK, with a strong tradition of official secrecy and a
weak tradition of scrutiny and investigative journalism, has no such
safeguards.

The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to
increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a
competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up
kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private
companies happens -- on both sides of the water -- all the time.

The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the
operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid
for non-existent prisoners. The prison corporations have been
guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce
enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers
in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise
these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem:
you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom
associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes: "Prison expansion
[has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping
prisons full and in building more ... The result has been a financial
and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize."

Even as crime declines, lawmakers are pressed by their sponsors to
increase the rate of imprisonment. The US has, by a very long way,
the world's highest proportion of people behind bars: 756 prisoners
per100,000 people, just over 1% of the adult population. Similarly
wealthy countries have around one-tenth of this rate of imprisonment.

Like most of its really bad ideas, the last Conservative government
imported private jails from the US. As Stephen Nathan, author of a
forthcoming book about prison privatisation in the UK, has shown, the
notion was promoted by the home affairs select committee, which in
1986 visited prisons run by the Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA). When the corporation told them that private provision in the
US improved prison standards and delivered good value for money, the
committee members failed to check its claims. They recommended that
the government should put the construction and management of prisons
out to tender "as an experiment".

Encouraged by the committee's report, the CCA set up a consortium in
Britain with two Conservative party donors, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd
and John Mowlem & Co, to promote privately financed prisons over
here. The first privately run prison in the UK, Wolds, was opened by
the Danish security company Group 4 in 1992. In 1993, before it had
had a chance to evaluate this experiment, the government announced
that all new prisons would be built and run by private companies.

The Labour party, then in opposition, was outraged. John Prescott
promised that "Labour will take back private prisons into public
ownership -- it is the only safe way forward." Jack Straw stated that
"it is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration.
This is surely one area where a free market certainly does not
exist." He too promised to "bring these prisons into proper public
control and run them directly as public services".

But during his first seven weeks in office, Straw renewed one private
prison contract and launched two new ones. A year later he announced
that all new prisons in England and Wales would be built and run by
private companies, under the private finance initiative (PFI). Today
the UK has a higher proportion of prisoners in private institutions
than the US. This is the only country in Europe whose jails are run
on this model.

So has prison privatisation here influenced judicial policy? As we
discovered during the recent lobbying scandal in the House of Lords,
there's no way of knowing. Unlike civilised nations, the UK has no
register of lobbyists; we are not even entitled to know which
lobbyists ministers have met. But there are some clues.

The former home secretary, John Reid, previously in charge of prison
provision, has become a consultant to the private prison operator
G4S. The government is intending to commission a series of massive
Titan jails under PFI. Most experts on prisons expect them to be
disastrous, taking inmates further away from their families (which
reduces the chances of rehabilitation) and creating vast warrens in
which all the social diseases of imprisonment will fester. Only two
groups want them built: ministers and the prison companies -- they
offer excellent opportunities to rack up profits. And the very nature
of PFI, which commits the government to paying for services for 25 or
30 years -- whether or not they are still required -- creates a major
incentive to ensure that prison numbers don't fall. The beast must be fed.

And there's another line of possible evidence. In the two countries
whose economies most resemble the UK's -- Germany and France -- the
prison population has risen quite slowly. France has 96 inmates per
100,000 people, an increase of 14% since 1992. Germany has 89
prisoners per 100,000 -- 25% more than in 1992 but 9% less than in
2001. But the UK now locks up 151 out of every 100,000 inhabitants:
73% more than in 1992 and 20% more than in 2001. Yes, our politicians
have barely come down from the trees, yes we are still governed out
of the offices of the Daily Mail, but it would be foolish to dismiss
the likely influence of the private prison industry.

This revolting trade in human lives creates a permanent incentive to
lock people up: not because prison works, not because it makes us
safer, but because it makes money. Privatisation appears to have
locked this country into mass imprisonment.