The decision to strip the security company G4S of its contract to run HM Prison Birmingham, one of Britain’s biggest jails, has been a serious blow to the reputation of private prisons. But other privately run prisons have not attracted the same controversy. England and Wales now have 13 private prisons with 14.5 per cent of the prison population housed in them. Scotland has two, holding just under 16.5 per cent of all prisoners north of the border.
The UK began privatising prisons in 1992, but they have since become a feature of systems elsewhere in the English-speaking world and including the US, where companies are under pressure over human rights and treatment of prisoners.
I believe that contracting out prisons to the private sector has been a serious mistake. It is something I refused to do as a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, but not because I was hostile to privatisation generally — quite the opposite.
I championed the sale of council houses in Scotland in the early 1980s. As secretary of state for Scotland, I privatised both the Scottish electricity industry and the Scottish Bus Group. Indeed, I persuaded Mrs Thatcher to privatise the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. which she had been told could not be done. As John Major’s transport secretary, I strongly advocated the privatisation of British Rail.
Prisons are different. My opposition is based on an issue of fundamental principle rather than on whether privately run prisons are as efficient as traditional prisons. I believe that prison officers are uniquely different to those employed in other privatised sectors.
The role of prison officers, empowered to incarcerate those under their control, is comparable to that of a police officer, judge or soldier. They are given their powers, as officers of the state, to deprive citizens of their liberty or, for soldiers, to wound or kill in combat.
The physical deprivation of a citizen’s liberty should not be the responsibility of a private company or of its employees. That does not mean there should be no role for the private sector in the prison service. There can be no objection to a prison being built and owned by a company and then leased back, if that makes commercial sense. Nor should there be any objection to private companies providing catering or other services in a prison, provided that does not involve locking up or restraining prisoners. The armed forces, very sensibly, use the private sector for housing and for a range of other services that do not involve combat or the use of weapons.
It is true that the admirable prisons inspectorate has equal power to investigate all prisons, regardless of how they are run. But that is not relevant to the argument. For prison officers to be employees of, and answerable to, private companies remains no more appropriate than it would be to have private police officers, private soldiers or private judges hearing criminal cases.
Security personnel employed by private companies do not have the same powers as police officers; they cannot arrest or bear arms in the course of their duties. This is significant.
Privatisation has, in my view, been one of the great success stories of the past 40 years — in the UK and beyond. It has ensured that many old and failing industries have been transformed into vigorous, innovative and successful public companies. The public interest has been well served and I have been proud to have been responsible for some of these changes. Yet the purpose of privatisation was never to render unto Caesar that which was more properly the responsibility of, in this case, the state.
The loss of liberty in a free society is an ultimate punishment for any man or woman. Incarceration should be administered by servants of the state and not by private companies in Britain or elsewhere, regardless of efficiency or cost effectiveness.
The writer was a Conservative minister or secretary of state from 1979-97
