The Labour-Alliance Government of New Zealand has swept
aside the former administration’s prison privatisation
plans for five new prisons and seven specialist youth
facilities. The Government is, however, honouring
Australasian Correctional Management’s (ACM) recently
awarded five year contract to run the new Auckland Central
Remand Prison. The prison is due to open in June 2000. But
Matt Robson, Minister of Corrections, has warned ACM that
they should not expect “a long life in this field.”
Prior to the election in November
1999, the Department of Corrections had predicted that the
prison population would rise by more than 40 per cent a year
by 2010. The former administration had planned to put all
new facilities out to tender. While the latter are under
development, the plan for new prisons is now being reviewed.
In a statement on 17 January 2000, Mr.
Robson said that “There has been an experiment overseas -
driven by ideology - to introduce private prisons and it
hasn’t worked. The ideology-driven belief that ... private
is better is not suited to our prisons, and this government
won’t let New Zealanders become guinea pigs for an
experiment here.”
He admitted that the present public
system was failing but claimed that this was due to the
legacy of the former administration. He said that the
solution was “not private” but “resourcing the New
Zealand system to do its job properly.” He added that,
“at the end of the day, we don’t want prisons to be a
growth industry. We want the need for prisons to decrease by
putting resources into crime prevention.”
The Corrections Association of New
Zealand, which represent some 80 per cent of the country’s
prison officers, said that ACM’s contract had an exit
clause for the government. But Mr. Robson said that “it
was clear that the cost of withdrawing from the former
government’s contract could not be fully quantified. The
advice we received could not give us a firm guarantee that
the costs could be accurately predicted. The government
could have been dragged into a lengthy and costly legal
process, and we are not prepared to take that risk with
taxpayers money. We have to put this behind us now, and will
get on with developing the best run public prisons, staffed
by the best people for the job. My priority is to develop
prisons that take in offenders and return them after
sentence as safe members of our community. Prisons will not
become a growth industry under this government. Crime
prevention will.”73
