All this has been known for some time so it is hard to understand why the National Government contemplated engaging this company to run a state prison - a prison that, apparently, houses offenders who have cellphones and access to the internet, and who engage in fight clubs and assorted violence against their fellow inmates.
The idea that private enterprise can provide state services more efficiently than government departments is attractive to the neo-liberal view.
It fits the notion that the state should divest itself of the complexities of managing the day-to-day running of places such as prisons to cut the cost and create some distance between itself and any poor outcomes.
In the instance of running a prison, a company like Serco can maximise profits by doing the absolute minimum defined in the contract and use creative excuses when things go wrong.
A prison is a public service charged with humane containment of offenders - it protects the community while they serve out their sentence. The duty of prison management is both to keep the inmates safe from one another and ensure they are not a risk to those outside.
It is a difficult task. I worked in a prison as a social worker for several years, and I learned a lot about criminal behaviour and the complexities of protecting inmates and staff from violence.
Prisons can be dangerous places that require skilled and committed staff to keep themselves and those in their charge from further offending and violence while inside. This is a legislated duty of the state and farming out the task to profit-driven private enterprise is bound to end in tears.
In the United States there is a huge industry that has been built on the money to be made from the constructing and selling technology and management systems for prisons.
These companies have a vested interest in ensuring more prisons are built and lobby federal and state government for increased jail terms and sentences for a wider range of offences because these will increase their profits. It has been suggested that this lobbying is one element that contributes to the US having the highest imprisonment rate per population in the world - and I believe New Zealand is not far behind.
For these reasons alone, it is important that prisons remain the direct responsibility of government in NZ.
The other reason is that, contrary to what the National Government may say, private enterprise does not always operate more effectively than the state - the deregulation of the energy sector, with the aim of promoting competition and efficiency, introduced private profit and ever-increasing power bills.
The fact that the National Government has been pondering turning the management of social services over to corporations such as Serco should be setting off alarm bells.
Private enterprise is only interested in itself. Corporations consistently demonstrate that maximising profits comes ahead of any obligation to perform a particular duty of care. The potential for fraud and/or failure to provide effective security in a prison may find the executives of contracting corporations inside, looking out between the bars.
-Terry Sarten is a Wanganui-based writer and social worker - feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz
