Privatising prisons

I don't know. Looking at Wandsworth prison on the news last night I was struck by its poor design. More modern designs of prisons effectively edit out the possibility of such group behaviour. It all comes down to money of course. Buildings, recruitment of the right staff (as opposed to people who have always done it) good training and support for these staff and meaningful activity for the prisoners is extremely expensive. I reckoned that those young lads I saw on the news needed to kept occupied in fairly tiring activities to burn off the energy that goes into procuring drugs and resultant violence. Heavy farm work? At least that might be productive. No easy answers as usual.

I agree we need new prison buildings but they still shouldn't be privately owned or run.

G4 runs young offenders prisons - Theresa May's husband has shares in this company

The prison system is antiquated. Most of the inmates are younger men, and many of them seem to be locked up for 24 hours a day.
You wonder why there are drugs ? You wonder why they fight?
They need employment and they need to be housed in decent conditions with decent food and dare I say it decent people working there who do not either bring drugs in or turn a blind eye for a back hander.

The prison system need cleaning up. We need to build new prisons and demolish the old victorian ones.

I could say an awful lot but I won't.

If it were privatised it could not be any worse than it is now.

IMHO

A large proportion of prisoners are illiterate, some through no fault of their own (dyslexia etc). Trying to educate them would help them integrate in the workplace on release - whether that's done privately or Government funded. Obviously, there would be those who wouldn't accept the help, but it may help some.

Dear God we have become more like the USA.
Prisons are one thing that should not be left to capitalism and profit. Since the last election with the lack of the Lib Dems in coalition our country has become more and more hard line right wing.

An article in the Huffington Post in 2014 quoted:

The Independent, 2009: "Britain's private prisons are performing worse than those run by the state, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

"...Separate figures, also released under the right-to-know law, show that nearly twice as many prisoner complaints are upheld in private prisons as they are in state-run institutions."

"In 2008, 10 of the 11 private prisons in England and Wales came in the bottom quarter of the Ministry of Justice's prison performance league table. "

In 2013, the BBC News site reported:

"Two privately-run prisons are among three the government has expressed "serious concern" over, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) ratings have revealed.

HMP Oakwood, run by G4S, HMP Thameside, run by Serco, and the Prison Service's HMP Winchester in Hampshire, were given the lowest performance rating of one.

".....The ratings come after private security companies G4S and Serco came under fire for overcharging the government by "tens of millions of pounds" for providing electronic tags for criminals."

To run a prison for profit you need to minimise your costs. Well that's easy. Use fewer and less qualified staff, limit/have no educational facilities, increase the number of prisoners per cell, keep the prisoners in their cells as much as possible, feed the prisoners poor quality food, keep the heating at a lower temperature and make the prisoners wear jumpers.

If you're lucky you get demoralised prisoners who don't have the motivation to complain. However you're more likely end up with a riot. That's not a problem though because you can call the publicly funded riot police to sort it out. Any damage that has nothing to do with security can be left as the prisoners brought any discomfort on themselves. You can also use the riot to convince the government to agree that prisoners can be on lock down for even longer and cut your staffing costs even more.

Of course with no education or attempt at rehabilitation the chances are that the prisoner will reoffend. That's brilliant because you need a constant stream of offenders so that you can keep your facility full and therefore most cost efficient.

It's a win win situation.

Privatisation doesn't work.

I'm not so sure about education being the only way ahead. It sounds bad but these young lads need hard physical labour in fresh air to tire them out. Good food would help too. I don't mean breaking stones though! Heavy unmechanised farm work? After a day of that a good nights sleep would result. Not going to happen of course. Sigh.

Hard physical labour is an education of sorts. Education doesn't have to be all intellectual. Learning by doing is still learning.

bags you sound like a good Victorian?

Bollocks. Nothing do with the Age of Victoria, just a well-known educational fact. Children learn by doing more than by any other method.

Plus, for example, I have learned more about gardening by doing it in different situations than I ever would have learned from books. So I'm speaking from first hand experience.

Rubbish, hard physical labour is not an education of any sort. What good is learning to dig a hole when one cannot read . Soooo Victorian ,

Who said anything about not being able to read?

I maintain there is skill in digging holes. Learning skills is educational.

Depending what kind of hole you want, of course. But to illustrate my point, have a look at some pics of archaeological digs. Even grave digging must involve some skill not to have the sides of your hole collapsing on you, especially when someone was down there with a spade. I guess graves are dug with diggers now. Manipulating a mechanical digger requires skill.

Also, diggin holes is not the only kind of hard physical work. What about cutting back brushwood where it is growing over footpaths? What about picking up litter off beaches? There's loads of socially useful tasks people could be made to do to try and teach them some socially responsible attitudes.

What is community work instead of being 'detained at Her Majesty's pleasure' if not this kind of thing?

There's also the thing that my dad was always saying to us about a healthy mind needing a healthy body. Good hard exercise (not excessive, just good) is good for a person.

However, we seem to have digressed from privatisation of prisons. As you were.

I'm off out to saw a HUGE branch off a tree.

Step back when the branch falls thatbag

I am not prepared to say why but I have a current knowledge of prisons.

Whether they are illiterate or not these mostly young men deserve more than to be left to rot in a prison cell for many hours each day. A lot of them return so incarceration is no detriment.

The food is horrible. The conditions are horrible, and there should be more recreation or gainful employment.

They should be able to gain qualifications while inside, and I'm not talking about health and safety stuff either - proper qualifications.

Some young men on the wrong side of the law have nowhere to live the day their sentence ends. There is nothing to give them any form of hope and that is why they re-offend.

In this day there has to be a change in the way we look at offenders.... I mean we look at everything else differently don't we?

It's not so much about punishment - the punishment is cutting them off from society and the people they love... it's about helping them to rehabilitate so they won't end up back here again. Break the chain.

I'm not joking now, I'm crying as I type this.

Working with prisons in the past, it really seems to me that education is key but the prisoners and staff all agree that you need a full staffing to make education work.
A big issue is that the courses are being run, but sometimes there is absolutely no one free to walk the prisoner from their cell to the place where education takes place. In some cases tutors have been sitting in empty 'classrooms' and the inmates are sitting getting annoyed and bored in their cells.

Also, some of the 'best' and 'easiest' prisons were the ones that the private sector picked off in the last round - so that makes the statistics of public v private all the more alarming.

Well said Nonnie

You're right about accommodation Nonnie1..
The move-on hostel in our town is closed down. At a guess this is to do with the costs since service charges were expected to be paid by the client...
Until recently I was also the lay adviser on my local public protection board and believe me, the number of registered accommodations were reducing year on year and this was a major headache when looking for supported placements for those being released.

These are often people who have had a very bad start in life, who may have been deprived of a secure family and home (care leavers are significantly over-represented in the prison population), and who often have very few literacy and numeracy skills. On top of that, 10% of men and 30% of women prisoners have received inpatient psychiatric treatment, and many others have mental health issues.

Whilst I think it's a good idea that prisoners actually do something useful for part of the day, and this may include physical work, I also believe they should be housed in decent prisons, given access to fresh air and exercise and given a chance to catch up educationally. I don't think that should just be learning reading, writing and arithmetic, but also the opportunity to enjoy the arts - painting, singing, drama - all of which are known to be beneficial in improving self esteem and creating a more confident and positive approach to life.

Some of the people on a course I attended worked as literacy teachers in prisons and they said the commonly held view that prisoners had a "cushy life" would soon be dispelled if the people confidently putting forward such an opinion actually visited a prison and saw the tragedy of it.

I think the state of our prisons, in a country as rich as ours, is a national disgrace.