Ryall Tony: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Ryall Tony: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13017] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I draw the Committee’s attention to a number of amendments in my name which I hope members will support. Among other things they will remove the legislating of the integrated offender management experiment because there are different ways of managing prisons and when the Government changes that will be changing. 
Richard Worth 
: When will that be? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Very soon and hopefully soon I say to the member. When introducing this bill the Attorney-General Margaret Wilson gave only one reason for abolishing private prisons. She said: “Prisons by their very nature involve the use of highly coercive powers against individuals. This Government believes that it is inappropriate for private sector organisations to wield such powers.” The majority of parties in this Parliament strongly disagree. As Charles H Logan an American professor said: “Keepers do not take away anyone’s freedom. Catchers and convicters and sentencers do.” As I said in question time today—I had asked the Minister who was completely unable to respond—there is an important difference between the power to deny liberty and the job of carrying out those orders. The power to punish belongs to the people and is subject to the rule of law. That rule of law applies to the public and the private sectors alike. That means the State is free to choose who carries out its custodial responsibilities and obligations and as such it can use the resources that are freed up for priority areas like policing schools and hospitals. 
This measure is based solely on ideology. That is made even clearer when we consider that this same Government at the same time that it says it does not want the private sector involved in prisons is inviting the private sector to provide prisoner custody services between prisons and courthouses. So apparently it is OK for private enterprise to use coercive powers between courts and prisons but it is not OK in the prison. 
Let us look at the evidence of the cost and quality. Prohibiting private involvement in prisons is contrary to every international experience. The Australians the Canadians the South Africans the Brits and the Americans are all expanding the use of private prisons. In fact the Prime Minister’s close personal friend Tony Blair has announced that all new prisons under the Labour Party Government there will be built and operated by the private sector. Here in New Zealand the department’s budget has more than doubled in 10 years. Well over a billion dollars will be needed to build four new prisons in the next 5 years. The proposed prison at Meremere is going to cost more than $260 million compared with its original budget of $188 million. Members will be shocked to know but probably not surprised that the private company Australasian Correctional Management which manages the Auckland Central Remand Prison told Parliament’s Law and Order Committee that it could build the 650-bed Meremere prison for half the price. 
Research shows that internationally the private sector can manage prisons between 5 and 15 percent more cheaply than the public sector. Let us go to Tony Blair’s Britain again where Her Majesty’s Prison Service concluded that private sector prisons provided significant operational savings of between 13 and 22 percent over the cost of public prisons. Here in New Zealand the private prison in Auckland runs at $43000 a head per prisoner. It has a mix of low and high-security prisoners in a high-security environment. Public prisons cost $54000 a year for minimum-security prisoners and $72000 a year for high-security prisoners. 
Brian Connell 
: How much? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: It is $72000 for high-security prisoners and $54000 for minimum-security prisoners. If private prisons are cheaper Mr Swain says it is because the quality does not measure up. But Mr Swain’s own department has written to Australasian Correctional Management to congratulate it on its performance and to note that it has performed every contractual standard. Here is a point that I think Richard Worth made earlier in the debate. The British National Audit Office recently completed a major review of private prisons in Britain—