Germany; Privatising the prisons, with a little help from the UK
01 March 2003
Between 24 and 25 March this year, around 40 representatives from the criminal justice, economic and political sectors met at a conference organised by the German association Management Circle AG on "Prisons - (Partly) Privatised Prisons as new area of Investment!". Speakers from law firms, businesses, the justice ministry, universities as well as from building and leasing sectors met to discuss the advantages and incentives for introducing a partial privatisation of Germany's prisons because "The penal system is expensive!", and can therefore also be very profitable. Speaker Ian Andrews, English lawyer and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales did not need to convince the conference goers of the financial advantages of "Public Private Partnerships" (PPP), "Private Finance Initiatives" (PFI) or "output oriented financing of prison systems", because all of them had come there not to listen to critiques of the plan but to learn how and where to invest as well as about the legal remits and possibilities of the scheme. The conference even included a visit to a Berlin prison to "have a look inside", this after the informal get-together at which participants should "relax in a comfortable atmosphere and get into deeper conversation with speakers and participants!"
Although in Germany progress in privatisation has been slow due to constitutional concerns and legal restrictions, first attempts have already been made with the prisons in Waldeck and Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg Vorpommern. Another PPP prison is being planned, the JVA Hünfeld in eastern Hesse which is to hold 500 inmates (presented as a model project at the conference by Torsten Kunze from the Hessian ministry of justice).
The privatisation of the prison industry has shown to lead to a deterioration in prison standards in the US as well as the UK and private prison firms are not interested in rehabilitation or social causes of crime, because the more prisoners there are, the more profit they make.
These issues are addressed by prisoner support groups and anti-racist initiatives, the latter fighting against detention centres and their further deterioration with privatisation, including increasingly racist behaviour by security staff. In Germany. The only real resistance they are likely to meet is not the public concerned about civil liberties and a soaring prison population, but local residents fearing a drop in their house prices with prisons being built in their area. The planned PPP prison in Schlüchtern was shelved for that reason.
Telepolis 26.3.03; www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/konf/14469/1.html,, Jungle World 19.3.2003; see: http://www.mcf.de/pdf_upload/03-6349web.pdf, www.hessen.de/justiz/