Private companies operating in New Zealand will soon be able to compete with the public Corrections Department to run new prisons, including a 900-to-1200-bed jail due to open by 2012. Corrections Minister Judith Collins has told officials to draw up legislation which would allow private companies to tender for jail management contracts, with legislation expected later in the year. The National government is arguing that private companies commonly used to run prisons overseas provide better management and programs and do the job cheaper than government agencies.

The Public Service Association has countered that argument however, saying that National is ignoring the risks and real cost of privatising prisons; the need for private companies to make a profit.

This means companies running prisons look for ways of cutting costs at the expense of the service they provide, which has happened with privatised prisons overseas,

commented Public Service Association National Secretary Richard Wagstaff in a press release. The PSA notes that in 1999 an American company called Wackenhut was stripped of contracts to run prisons in Texas and Louisiana. Wackenhut was accused of mistreatment of prisoners and trying to maximise profits at the expense of drug rehabilitation, counseling and literacy programs. When New Zealand last experimented with private prisons a subsidiary of Wackenhut - Australian Correctional Management Service Ltd - was contracted to run the Auckland Central Remand Prison.

National’s policy to have private companies once again tendering to run prisons makes no mention of how this American company sought to maximise its profits by cutting its rehabilitation services to its prisoners,

The Maori Party is supporting the idea, suggesting that control of prisons be given to Iwi (Maori tribes that today operate in a manner similar to private corporations). Their stance has been criticised by Maori activist Sina Brown Davis;

[That] The Maori party is dressing this up as some sort of Rangatiratanga [soverenty] & economic opportunity is disgusting and makes me sick. We all know that our people already disproportionately fill the prisons...That corporate Iwi are putting their hand up to make a buck out of the expansion of prison industrial complex in Aotearoa, is kupapatanga [collaboration with government] gone crazy.

Maori make up over 40% of prisoners despite being less than 15% of New Zealand’s population.