Madam, - Carol Coulter's article in your edition of April 22nd, "Overtime just one issue likely to be addressed", seems to accept the notion that a privatised prison escort service would be less expensive and more efficient than a publicly run service.
While this conclusion may be shared by Michael McDowell, it was dismissed by the Department of Justice's own expert committee which examined this question in 2002.
After studying the issue, the committee reported that "privatisation of prisoner escorts is not a viable option" and that it was not reasonable to conclude that privatisation would necessarily be cheaper or more efficient than a restructured escort service maintained in the public sector.
The Minister himself has admitted in the Dáil that his Department is unable to "comprehensively identif[y]" the current cost of the escort service, and that he cannot provide assurances that a privatised service would result in cost savings.
Ms Coulter also suggests that private prisons offer better conditions and regimes than public prisons. While it is true that private prisons in the UK are more modern than most public prisons, the reason is simple. The British Government has not approved the building of a new prison in the past decade that was not a private prison.
The fact that these prisons are modern is not because they are privatised, but because government policy has allowed only the private sector to build new prisons. To conclude that private prisons boast modern conditions simply because they are privatised is to fall victim to a political sleight of hand.
And new conditions do not necessarily equal safe conditions. For example, private prisons in the United States experience 50 per cent more prisoner-on-staff assaults and two-thirds more prisoner-on-prisoner assaults than public prisons.
In Australia, the government invoked emergency powers in 2000 to take control of the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre after four years of persistent problems. In the UK, the private Doncaster Prison had more incidents of prisoner self-harm between 1996 and 1999 than any other prison. Between 1998 and 2000 private prisons in the UK were fined £2.7 million for contract failures.
These are but a few of many examples of the international history of failure of prison privatisation.
Nor should private prisons be equated with cheaper prisons. After 20 years or more there is still no conclusive evidence that privatised prisons are less costly than public prisons. This has been the conclusion of the General Accounting Office and the Bureau of Justice Assistance in the US, and the National Audit Office in the UK.
If the Minister were truly committed to reducing the cost of the prison service he would begin by reducing the size of the prison population, as incarceration is the single most expensive (and often least effective) response to offending. That he instead plans to increase the prison population by more than 25 per cent by building two new super-prisons shows his concerns with cost savings to be hollow. - Yours, etc.,
RICK LINES, Executive Director, Irish Penal Reform Trust, Parnell Square West, Dublin 1.