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A custody officer talks to a young offender at Ashfield
Times Online profiles the company that runs Ashfield, the privately-run jail that has been deemed the worst in England and Wales.
Premier Prison Services was established in 1992 as a joint venture between Serco - a British company that also runs the Fylingdales missile warning system - and Wackenhut Corporation, an American security firm owned by
Group 4, the world's second largest security company, which has more than 230,000 staff in 80 countries. .
Premier runs four prisons in England (Ashfield, Doncaster, Lowdham
Grange and Dovegate), Kilmarnock jail in Scotland, as well
as immigrant detention centres, and is typically awarded 25-year contracts. It is paid on a per-prisoner basis.
In April 2000 Wackenhut abandoned its contract to run a juvenile prison in Louisiana after a local judge and the US Justice Department found that the inmates were being physically abused and deprived of adequate food and warm clothing. The judge released 11 boys from the jail because
of the conditions.
A series of US lawsuits has been
launched against Wackenhut, according to news reports. Over the years, inmates from several facilities have accused staff of abuse. Wackenhut says that in Louisiana it ran a
secure prison and that inmates were exaggerating any problems.
In the early 1990s, Wackenhut - founded by a former FBI agent - was found to have violated state and
federal law by spying on an environmental activist for an
oil company client. In a civil suit it reportedly paid $5
million to settle the case following a House Committee on
Interior and Insular Affairs investigation.
Premier
financed the building of Ashfield prison and now runs it as
a private jail. Private prisons were established with the
expectation of a 15-20 per cent saving over government-run
jails. The Office of Government Commerce says that using
Premier has saved 14 per cent on the public sector cost of
running Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire.
It costs Premier between £20,000 to £39,000 a year per prisoner to
run its British jails. The company's pre-tax profits fell in 2001 and 2000 to pre-1998 levels. In 2001 the company recorded £2.6 million in pre-tax profits compared with £4.1
million in 1998. In that period, turnover rose consistently
each year to £69 million in 2001.
Stephen Nathan, editor
of Prison Privatisation Report International, says there are
no truly accurate comparisons between private prisons and the public sector. "Two publicly built and privately managed prisons, Buckley Hall and Blakenhurst, have been brought into public sector control after tendering exercises found
the prison service to be cheaper," he said.
Some of the
problems at Ashfield are put down to Premier refusing certain tasks as they were not part of its contract. Mr Nathan says that commercial confidentiality prevents the
public from learning the details of the contract. "On the one hand, if they are not contractually bound to provide a
particular function then why should they do so? On the other hand, if to go beyond the terms of the contract would enable better practice then they should go the extra mile. However, the difficuty for the company is that to do so would eat
into their profits."
England has nine privately run
prisons, in addition to Premier running four of them, Group 4, Premier's part-owner, controls three. In response to concerns over its near-monopoly, Mr Nathan said that Group 4 stated in May 2002 that it intended to sell Wackenhut's
prison business. "So far this has not happened. Inviting
other companies from the US to run prisons in the UK is no
solution as they also have chequered histories."
The private security industry in Britain, including uniformed
community patrols, is worth £4 billion a year, according to
Management Today magazine.
