Parker David: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Parker David: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2030] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 What that member calls nanny State I call principle. There are certain functions of the State that ought not to be contracted out. One of those functions is taking away a person’s liberty. That ought not to be contracted out. Where to next? As Phil Goff said earlier where will it go to next? Will it be a private army? Will it be a private police force? Again they are functions that ought not to be contracted out. The National Government’s policy on this fails the most basic principle that this is one of those core State functions that cannot legitimately be contracted out. 
There are some and National Party members are amongst them—and it was not put very eloquently by the person who spoke before me—who try to drive a fine distinction between the allocation of a penalty that deprives someone of their liberty and the deprivation of liberty following sentence. But such fine distinctions cannot be made because it is the private contractor in that prison who makes decisions that affect the liberty of the person who is the prisoner. It is the report of the private contractor that is relevant at the parole hearing which determines how long that person stays in custody. Those are the functions of the State not the functions of private enterprise. 
Shane Ardern 
: Why? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is for the same reason that we ought not to contract out the army to mercenaries or the police force to a private police force. They are proper functions of the Crown not private enterprise. 
There is an important principle at stake here and it is that some things ought not to be put out of the control and responsibility of the State and into the private sector. The State is held accountable for prison policy through elections. Private enterprise has no such control. Private enterprise is not held accountable for its actions in depriving people of their liberty through elections. There is no control on private enterprise in that way. One might think that if there was not some reason for the basic fundamental principle that one ought not to contract out core State functions then some good should be achieved through contracting out. The international experience on contracting out correctional facilities is now some decades old. We heard Phil Goff recount that the experiment in Canada failed. Canada reverted to State control of prisons. He also adverted to some of the literature in the United States. 
I thought it was notable that the Minister of Corrections did not make any reference to any studies overseas as to the effectiveness of private prisons—because she cannot. She said that we will have an increase in the prison population on the Government’s forecast of 5000 prisoners over the next 10 years. That statement most clearly illustrates that the biggest issue in respect of corrections policy and whether it is succeeding or failing is rates of recidivism—rates of reoffending. 
For there to be any justification for a move to private prisons—and I think there is none on the principled basis but let us ignore that basic principle and look just at efficacy—we would have to be looking at overseas studies that have shown that private prisons have reduced rates of recidivism. But there are no such studies. There are none in Australia. A recent report from New South Wales in Australia on privatisation in the corrections industry which is published in the journal  
Corrections Criminology 
 concludes that there are few detailed studies on the effects that privatisation has on recidivism. There is an update to that and it notes that that remains the case in Australia. There is no evidence in Australia that some of their experiments with privatisation have worked. 
In the United States it is even worse. There are two peer-reviewed studies in the United States on the effects on recidivism of private correctional facilities. I will quote for members the first one entitled  
The Effectiveness of Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Public versus Private Management 
. The very learned authors are Patrick Bayer from Yale University and David Pozen from Oxford University. 
David Garrett 
: There are only two in the whole United States? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: The peer-reviewed ones? Mr Garrett is correct that there are only two. The member should know that if he has done his study as I have done. The study concludes that full profit management has statistically significant impacts on recidivism. It has statistically significant impacts on recidivism. The unfortunate fact for Mr Garrett is that the statistics go the wrong way. In 1 year recidivism rates are 5 to 8 percent higher for those juveniles who have been in privately run facilities. The other study is one called the Bales report. Again it is a peer-reviewed study of the experiments in Florida on private prisons. That study found no empirical justification for the policy argument that private prisons reduce recidivism more than public prisons do. 
That is why the Government has not produced any evidence by which it can justify contracting out this core State function—there is no evidence that it improves rates of recidivism. The peer-reviewed articles in fact go the other way. We also heard from Phil Goff and I will reinforce his points about the experiment in the UK. Again there was very poor analysis as to whether overall there have been good or bad results from prisons but the results that are available show that the poor prisons are the ones that have been contracted out to private providers. 
David Garrett 
: Would you like to table those two studies? I’d like to see them. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I can give the member the references. 
David Garrett 
: Just table them. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I am happy to table the information I got from the Parliamentary Library and it is a quote from there. I will give the member the reference and he can look it up. The reference is www.econ.yale.edu/growth. The PDF is cdp863. The member can look that up for himself. There is no doubt that there is no case for this on the basis of recidivism. 
Mr Goff makes a fair point. The only way prisons can make a profit is by cutting the cost of their services. The prisons themselves are provided by the State we are told by Sandra Goudie. Those running the prisons will not be able to reduce the cost of the bricks and mortar so the only thing they can do is cut the cost of services. The only way they can do that is either by paying people less having fewer people or reducing the level of services available to inmates. That last one is the one that concerns me. The other two concern me as well. A reduced number of corrections officers obviously would be poor but if there is not as much money spent on alcohol and drug programmes and if there is not as much money spent on literacy and numeracy programmes and anger management issues and violence issues are not dealt with we will have increasing rates of recidivism. I suspect that that is why the international studies do not show a decrease in recidivism as a consequence of privatisation of correctional facilities but rather an increase. It is because the private prisons cut costs where they can and one area where they cut costs is the programmes that would reduce recidivism. 
The Government instead of privatising prisons should be focusing on how it can reduce rates of recidivism. A move towards private prisons will increase rates of recidivism. New Zealand already has the second-highest rate of imprisonment in the Western World behind the United States. We should not follow the United States further down that route. We certainly should not follow the United States into having privatised correctional facilities. 
I have one last point. The other bit of news we had from the Minister of Corrections in recent weeks was a plan for a 1200-person prison. A 1200-person prison! What a ridiculous prison policy—a 1200-person prison! Gang culture will prevail. 
David Garrett 
: What a stupid argument! 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: David Garrett says it is a stupid argument. The Roper report into corrections facilities said— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member’s time has expired.