Like any corporation they seek expansion profit maximisation and new markets. In human terms this translates as the production and searching for a greater number of prisoners, the exploitation of a captive labour force and the manufacture of crime and criminal behaviour. Commercial confidentiality laws exempt any corporation from revealing information about the contracts and running of the prison and treatment of the prisoners. Experience elsewhere of the privatisation of prisons has been devastating for prisoners who have come to be seen and treated not as human beings, but profit units. Though it is hardly surprising, it is terrifying that our government is endorsing and encouraging this institutionalised violence and exploitation of women.
Women inside represent the condition of all women in society.
The institiutional prison contains women who have suffered the worst excesses of a highly stratified sexist, racist, and class-based society. In the period 1990-1993 in Victoria alone at least 40 women under 30 have died weeks after their release. In the last two years at least another 19 women have died within weeks of their release from prison. Women in prison are often administered large quantities of tranx and psych drugs. On one day in August 1995 there were 365 administrations of tranx and psych drugs to 87 women.