Turei Metiria: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2032] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 It is clear that the Green Party is opposed to the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. Tonight I want to set out a response to the economic arguments that have been put forward by Government members but first I will address the issue of Maori imprisonment and the profiteering from that imprisonment. 
Profiteering from the imprisonment of Maori is simply profiteering from institutional racism regardless of who profits. On this issue the Green Party and the Maori Party diverge and that saddens me terribly. I agree that the Department of Corrections has an appalling record with regard to involving Maori in prison issues and that the 50 percent of the prison population who are Maori desperately need interventions and the restoration of their mauri ora and mana that tikanga Maori within the prison environment can provide. But that will not be the case when the cash is going into the back pocket of some US corporation and when the cash is going into the back pocket of an iwi or runanga feeding off racism in the legal system. 
Racism in the legal system is a proven fact in this country. A 2007 report  
Over-representation of Maori in the criminal justice system 
 
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hows that the analysis of data from apprehension through to prosecution conviction and finally sentencing confirms that Maori are more likely to be apprehended and more severely punished than non-Maori. Judge Becroft of the Youth Court confirms that young Maori are more likely to receive a harsher sentence for lesser crimes than those committed by their Pakeha counterparts. So now we know why the Maori imprisonment rate is five to eight times higher than that of Pakeha. For Maori the cost of this legislation is that more of us will end up in jail. 
Private profiteering provides no protection for Maori and incentivises a massive increase in prison population by the use of the full range of racist filters in the system. Having Maori managers of a prison at the end of systemic economic policy programmes specifically designed to put our people in jail is pointless. We cannot protect our people from that systemic racism if key Maori organisations support the economic levers that put our people in there in the first place. We urge Maori across the motu to condemn this legislation. 
The Government argues that private management will save public money; that is the key reason why it promotes this bill. Yet the facts prove the Government 100 percent wrong on that. The facts from the running of private prisons in the US and Australia clearly show that there are no real cost savings to the public purse. The United States Department of Justice report  
Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons 
 clearly showed that the privatisation model simply mimicked the public sector in every practical and critical way. The promises from private companies in the US of 20 percent savings simply did not eventuate. Any modest savings that were made came at the cost of reductions in staffing and other labour-related costs. The report concluded that “This amount of savings will not revolutionize modern correctional practices.” which proves Judith Collins wrong. In other words privatisation has no practical impact on the cost of running prisons or on the practice of running prisons. 
An Australian paper “Privatisation and New South Wales Prisons: Value for Money and Neo-liberal Regulation” published just last year also showed that the privatisation of prisons did not result in value for money or a significant reduction in cost. In fact the paper showed that the rhetoric of cost-effectiveness undermined alternative criteria for assessment such as safety educational outcomes and reduced offending. That is where the National Government is duping the public. By misleading the public on the efficiency of private prison management it is diverting attention from the most important issue of all: the effective use of taxpayers’ money to keep our communities safe. Public scrutiny of private prisons will be severely limited. As the New South Wales example shows the actual internal operating efficiencies of the private operator are not made public. An Australian Public Accounts Committee report showed that the actual operating costs for the private prison are not available as GEO Group is a private company that is in competition with other operators in Australia and that information is commercially sensitive. 
Private prisons have a strategic advantage over the public sector because the public sector is required to make that information publicly available. The private sector however is not. This is how the contracts will be managed in New Zealand. This legislation does not protect the public right of scrutiny over privately run prisons. The company that runs the private prisons in the US and Australia—Wackenhut which became GEO Group—is the same company that ran the Auckland Central Remand Prison which John Key described as producing “very good results”. Of course we know that the Auckland Central Remand Prison was run as a loss-leader. So what are the results of the operations of GEO Group and Wackenhut? We can look to the detention centres in Australia and the US for an accurate picture of what our prison system will look like under these companies. 
In the UK Wackenhut received a placing in the  
Observer 
’s hall of infamy Golden Vulture Awards for amongst other things “sadism greed and frightening incompetence”. It has been subject to allegations of sexual abuse physical violence and unsafe work practices. In the US the GEO Group operates 11 immigrant detention centres youth facilities and adult prisons. Its record includes settling a case where it placed a woman in a cell block with male inmates who raped and beat her such that she later took her own life. One hundred and twenty-five inmates were removed from a prison by State authorities for inadequate staff training and inadequate health-care. The prison reportedly served rotten food knowingly made false and misleading statements to State officials failed to keep complete criminal record checks on at least 100 prison guards and violated domestic and international laws on due process and humane treatment. None the less GEO is worth more than US$1 billion and made US$61 million from the US taxpayer in 2007. 
In Australia the Australian Medical Association and others have called for an independent inquiry into the private immigration centres based on staffing problems substandard services and child abuse. Privatisation in Australia was also used as a way to reduce the working conditions of corrections staff. Here in New Zealand we cannot afford more unemployment especially in some of the most dangerous institutions in the country where staff safety is severely compromised by staff reductions. New Zealanders need to know that this legislation will put our friends and family members who work in prisons at greater risk of both serious physical harm and unemployment. 
This evidence begs the question: can the free market be the solution to the problems of a prison system? The key to a successful business is repeat customers thereby providing a perverse incentive to minimise programmes that reduce reoffending yet a reduction in reoffending is the key to keeping our communities safer. Reducing reoffending is a reduction in crime. In an article in the  
Guardian 
 earlier this month George Monbiot talked about the case where two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2000 children in exchange for bribes from private companies that ran the youth detention centres. Those judges were paid $2.6 million by private companies for helping to fill their jails. In one of the youth facilities run by GEO Group the facilities were so squalid that young people were stepping in their own faeces. 
There is no economic evidence that private prisons are cheaper for the public purse. The economic benefit lies with the corporation which will make a tidy profit from taxpayer money while providing no appreciable difference to the way that prisons are run or to their cost. In this legislation National is simply fulfilling its promise to its backers and the Green Party condemns this policy in the strongest possible terms.