Private prisons fail to improve again
22 December 2009
There were no improvements in the performance of the eleven run for profit jails with two of them scoring the lowest performance markings in the MoJ’s prison ratings for the second quarter of 2009/10.
Two private prisons HMP/YOI Doncaster and HMP Peterborough score the low ‘2’ figure requiring development rating, which means there has been no progress since the first quarter figures earlier this year.
The latest figures undermine claims by ministers that a greater use of private jails will raise accommodation standards for more than 84,000 prisoners held across both the public and private sectors.
Eleven prisons in England and Wales are run privately and shared between just three companies. Nine of these prisons have been financed, designed, built and are run by the private sector under PFI contracts.
Two former privately managed prisons, Blakenhurst and Buckley Hall, were brought into the public sector and are now publicly run. These score good performance ratings in the most recent figures.
The government is committed to building five more private prisons to accommodate the growing prison population even though they are more expensive to run than ones in the public sector.
Peter Olech, PCS negotiations officer for the Prison Service, said:“The continued poor performance ratings of private prisons in England and Wales throws into question any arguments about the supposed cost savings and other benefits of using the private sector to tackle the prison crisis.
“The concern of PCS is that the increased marketisation of prisons is driving forward a prison building programme. In doing so it is taking up scarce public resources and detracting from meaningful debate about the rising prison population and progressive penal policies which would genuinely tackle the issue.
"We believe that if this is left to the private-sector then no significant reduction will ever be made in tackling prison overcrowding through tackling reoffending.”
Recent news
- Proposed agreement on Land Registry reached
- Battle bus takes to the streets
- Strike action to hit budget day
- Invest in revenue and customs to tackle deficit
- Hewlett Packard staff on strike for second day
- Support strong on second day of civil service strike
- Civil and Public Servants start national 48 hour strike
- Strike action in the North East and North West at HP Enterprise Services
- Massive support on first day of civil service strike
- Civil servants lobby parliament
Tab Bottom
- Directory
- Contact Us
- Search
