Private prison welcome change of direction

National yesterday announced that a new prison would be built and run by private entities in what is known as a “Public Private Partnership” (PPP). This has prompted the usual hysterical musings from opposition parties, particularly the Communists (sorry, the Greens), and left wing commentators. In the odd world they inhabit, it is written in stone somewhere that running prisons is a “core state function”, regardless of the evidence that privately run prisons can be good for society, and good for prisoners.

Our only experience with a privately run prison – the Auckland Central Remand Prison for a five year period – was overwhelmingly positive. Compared with public prisons, there were fewer assaults, both prisoner-on-prisoner and prisoner-on-guard, fewer suicide attempts, fewer escapes (one in five years, which cost the operator a hefty $50,000 penalty) and what everyone but the prison officers union says was a much more harmonious environment. It was the only remand prison in the country which had numeracy and literacy programmes for inmates.

None of that matters to the ideological apparatchiks in the Labour and Green Parties of course. Their unchanging mantra is, as always, “state-run good, private bad”. As the architect of “three strikes”, it is actually very amusing how the Communists Greens in particular use American examples selectively – they wholeheartedly approve of “medical marijuana” in California for example, but reject Three Strikes – whose birthplace was of course that state – as the work of Satan (or whatever is their substitute for that entity in their strange world).

I have lost count of the number of times we have heard about two Judges in one state of the US who were convicted of getting kickbacks for sending youth offenders to a privately run facility. The frequency with which this is recycled is evidence of its rarity. I don’t know how many Judges there are in the entire United States, but there must be tens of thousands. And we keep hearing – and no doubt will again – about two corrupt ones. The inference of course is that we may have Judges similarly likely to act corruptly – a suggestion for which there is not a shred of evidence.

The opposition reserves particular venom for the Maori party, which supports privately run prisons. Maori support private prisons because they are the best vehicle for trying “Maori solutions” for high recidivism. There is little doubt that some Maori entity – perhaps an iwi owned company – will make a bid to run the new prison. Although the history of “cultural” treatment programs for criminals has had little success worldwide, I say good luck to them. The one thing we know for sure is the model we have been using for 40 years or so has not worked – particularly for Maori. If a prison run on different lines reduces recidivism from its present woeful level that can only be good.

Except in the “state-run good, private bad” world inhabited by the opposition.