Prison officers called today for a privately run London prison to be turned over to the public sector after inspectors exposed horrendous violence and all-day lock-ups.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons found that Serco-run HMP Thameside, which opened in March 2012, was riven by violence and had “one of the most restrictive regimes” inspectors had ever seen.
There was a high level of assaults and prisoners had little confidence in the inexperienced staff to handle violence or deliquency.
Inspectors found that guards used a high, but reducing, level of force, segregation and harshly limited inmates’ time out of their cells.
Six in 10 inmates were locked up during the working day with some shut up for 23 hours.
There were also far too few activity places to meet prisoners’ needs, inspectors said.
Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick said the first stage in a new jail’s operation was “critical and demanding” and that Thamesmead staff and managers had faced “clearly evident” challenges “in bringing stability to this prison.
“The opening process had been hard work and very tough. There remained some big gaps at the prison and there was much to do before it could be seen as operating at its full potential.”
But prison officers union POA general secretary Steve Gillan said it was all too predictable.
National Offender Management Service chief executive Michael Spurr tried to defend the prison, saying that it was “still in the very early stages of its development.
“Decisive action has already been taken to address the concerns raised.”
“Less than a week after Justice Secretary Chris Grayling demanded that prisoners work harder to earn privileges, this flagship private prison is revealed to be locking up inmates for 23 hours a day because they don’t have anything constructive to do.
“This is what happens when you hand the justice system over to vast multinational corporations, who put cost-cutting and the interests of their shareholders ahead of concern for public safety.”
The sisters of two men who died in custody on a police-station floor pleaded with trade unionists in Glasgow today to join their fight for justice: here.
The Bahraini royal dictatorship are not the only dodgy people greenwashing … err … “footballwashing” their tainted human rights record. The Bahrain rulers do that by bribing the British army … and British football.
Sign the petition here to demand that university president Mary Jane Saunders reverse her decision! Click here for the full letter. (And special thanks to the ACLU, Nation Inside, Cuéntame, and Grassroots Leadership for partnering with us on this action!!)
An e-mail by Robert Greenwald and Jesse Lava says:
GEO Group gave $6 million to name the stadium. What kind of message is this move sending to students? Saunders says the GEO Group is “a wonderful company” that she’s “very proud to be partnered with.” Yet this same group has faced lawsuit after lawsuit for its abysmal conduct. Staff members have sexually assaulted incarcerated children, prisoners have lived surrounded by feces, and multiple inmates have died due to the company’s corner-cutting and indifference. Students should NOT get the message that this is OK. That’s why our Beyond Bars campaign has partnered with the ACLU, Cuéntame, the Nation Inside, and Grassroots Leadership to take action.
The Geo Group is wholly owned by notorious British mercenary corporation G4S, aka Securicor.
This is a music video by British punk band Crass, of their song Securicor (another name for G4S corporation). Lyrics are here.
Gulag Nation USA: 2.3 Million Inmates, Forced Labor, Rancid Food — and It’s Making the Corporate Overlords Wealthy: here.
Britain: Prison staff blast report calling for privatisation: here.
How politically independent is the “independent think tank” Reform, which claims that profit-driven private companies are better at running prisons than the public sector and that all jails should face privatisation? Here.
On 9 February 2010 the PSA and other unions protested outside Parliament about the Government’s plan to privatise prisons. The last time a prison was privatised in New Zealand it cost more to run and provided a worse service. Corrections Department figures show it cost the Australian company that managed the Auckland Remand Prison from 2000 to 2005, $43,000 per inmate to run the prison, while Corrections operating costs per remand prisoner were $36,000.
An announcement that the coalition plans to press ahead with prison privatisation without consultation was met with fury from unions and reformers today.
The Ministry of Justice unveiled the selloff in an announcement which also admitted the total failure of Britain’s first ever prison privatisation at HMP Wolds.
Blundering security firm G4S is to be stripped of its contract running the training prison in Yorkshire after several years of warnings about deteriorating conditions.
A category B prison since 1992, HMP Wolds was demoted to a category C facility in 2001. Despite this lowered security rating inspectors warned of deteriorating conditions in 2010, expressing concerns over “the availability of drugs, a lack of staff confidence in confronting poor behaviour, weaknesses in the promotion of diversity and limited work and training provision.”
In June this year, Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick warned that while some improvements had been made, many concerns still hadn’t been addressed.
HMP Wolds, a category C training prison holding up to 395 men, will now return to the public sector at the end of the current contract in July 2013, the Ministry of Justice said.
However the ministry also announced that new competitions to run Northumberland prison and Lindholme, Hatfield and Moorland jails in South Yorkshire will go ahead with Sodexo, Serco and MTC/Amey as main bidders.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said: “The cost of running our prisons is too high and must be reduced.
“We can do this by being more innovative and efficient, and without compromising public safety.”
“These decisions are based on a flawed ideology and not on cost and provision of services,” a POA spokeswoman said.
“There can be no place for profit out of misery in a civilised society.”
Public servants’ union PCS called for a full independent inquiry into prison privatisation and a moratorium on any further sell-offs until it is completed.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “The privatisation of our prison service ought to be a national scandal and that this has happened without any public debate is shameful.
“It is morally reprehensible that companies are profiting from locking people up and we urgently need an independent review to look at the impact on our communities, staff and prisoners.”
“The government will seek to deflect criticism of its prison privatisation programme by excluding G4S from the next stage of the bidding process, but the principle of awarding lucrative contracts to private companies running prisons on the cheap remains unchallenged,” Ms Crook said.
The current regime of mass incarceration is very much tied to the emergence of the neoliberal state in America. The neoliberal state demands stability for the market, but ultimately generates instability with its generation of surplus populations and lack of social resources. This means that while neoliberalism seeks to limit state intervention in the market and slash social welfare nets in the name of “freedom,” it inevitably results in increased coercion, militarization and incarceration. And with its desire to subject every aspect of society to the market, prisons become not just a necessity under neoliberalism, but a profitable venture. These factors, not an epidemic of criminality, are the chief causes of mass incarceration in America. Prisons are therefore very much tied to the larger economic polices that Occupy opposes.
Incumbent President Saakashvili’s party defeated in Georgian election
3 October 2012
Incumbent Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili conceded defeat Tuesday in parliamentary elections held the previous day, paving the way for a transfer of power to a coalition headed by the richest man in the country, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Saakashvili’s National Movement suffered substantial losses in a clear vote against the man who came to power in 2003 at the head of the US-backed “Rose Revolution.” Shortly before Georgians went to the polls, the largest anti-government protests since 2003 took place in Tbilisi, involving an estimated 100,000 people.
According to the latest figures, Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream alliance won 53 percent of the vote. His party was founded only in April of this year and has no parliamentary representation. Saakashvili’s party received just 41.7 percent nationally and fared much worse in the capital city of Tbilisi.
The figures suggest that Ivanishvili’s party will get about 93 of the 150 seats in parliament, with Saakashvili’s National Movement taking around 46 seats. Some 11 seats are still unclear.
Saakashvili will remain as president until presidential elections set for next year, and Ivanishvili will become prime minister.
Saakashvili’s policies in recent years made clear that the so-called “Rose Revolution” had nothing to do with genuine democracy. Rather, the political overturn was driven by the efforts of the United States to extend its influence in the Caucasus and other former Soviet territories at the expense of Russia by engineering a realignment within the ruling elite in Georgia.
Saakashvili was openly anti-Russian and pro-American, and promoted a combination of free market economics and anti-Russian Georgian nationalism. Today, the country is in deep social and political crisis.
The elections themselves were far from democratic. According to the testimony of observers, there were grave irregularities in the vote count at several polling stations. Special forces stormed some polling stations to intimidate observers and falsify ballot papers in favor of the government. Even the web site of the Election Commission was attacked by hackers early Tuesday morning.
Even opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili himself did not vote as a protest against Saakashvili’s election rigging.
The country’s political future is now uncertain. Saakashvili will not be able to contest next year’s presidential election. Like his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Saakashvili had intended to assume the post of prime minister. Now his plans have been thrown into disarray by the election victory of Ivanishvili’s party.
The candidacy of Ivanishvili, who first announced his intention to run a year ago, revealed the divisions within the ruling elite in the face of increasing social polarization and growing conflicts between the great powers.
With a personal fortune of $6.4 billion—more than half the gross domestic product of the entire country—Ivanishvili is one of the 200 richest people in the world. Like most of the nouveau riche in the former Soviet Union, he made his fortune in the 1990s by buying state property cheaply and reselling it at a huge mark-up.
Since then, he has been linked closely to Russian oligarchs. In 2003, he supported the “Rose Revolution” and for some time was a major financier of the Saakashvili government. He claims to have fallen out with Saakashvili in 2007.
Both Ivanishvili and Saakashvili represent the tiny financial elite of the country and both support further cuts in social spending. Both support Georgia joining NATO and extending the country’s strategic relationship with the United States. However, unlike his rival, Ivanishvili also wants a rapprochement with Russia.
Relations between the two countries have remained tense since the Russian-Georgian war in the summer of 2008. Both Putin and Saakashvili repeatedly seek to aggravate tensions to divert attention from the social crisis in their respective countries. In the election campaign, Saakashvili once again adopted an aggressive posture towards Moscow.
For his part, Ivanishvili declared, “We have to talk to Russia to normalize our relations.” He indicated that the issue of relations with Russia was the main cause of his clash with Saakashvili in 2007.
The United States has notably distanced itself from Saakashvili in recent months while maintaining its strategic support for his government.
One reason for the deterioration of US relations with Saakashvili is Georgia’s close relations with Iran, one of Georgia’s most important economic partners. Saakashvili has sought to mediate between the US and Tehran. In the spring of this year, Saakashvili even invited an official from the Iranian Ministry of Defence to take part in a military exercise involving Georgian and US troops.
The outcome of the elections clearly shows the social and political discontent within broad layers of the population. The economic impact of the five-day war with Russia and the post-2008 economic slump are still clearly felt. Saakashvili has sought to recover the billions paid to foreign creditors by imposing massive cuts in already meager welfare and social benefits.
According to official sources, a third of Georgia’s 4.5 million inhabitants live below the poverty line which is set at an income of €70 per month. Almost two-thirds of the population (61 percent) earns less than $240 a month.
The average pension is €37, well below the poverty level. Unemployment is very high and is currently the single biggest social problem. It officially stands at 16 percent, but unofficial sources put the figure at 30 percent. In many agricultural regions, fifty percent of the population is unemployed.
Just weeks before the election, the Saakashvili government was rocked by a major scandal involving abuse in the prisons, which once again underlined the undemocratic character of the regime and outraged much of the population. On September 18, two television channels close to the opposition showed video footage of torture and the sexual abuse of a number of prisoners by their guards in the Gdani-8 prison in Tbilisi.
Thousands of people protested against the government in the ensuing days. According to reports, members of the families of prisoners stormed the Gdani-8 prison and demanded to see their friends and relatives. One woman had seen her son on the video and said, “He told me, ‘Say nothing, otherwise they will kill me’.”
The interior minister of the country, Bacho Akhalaia, was forced to resign over the scandal, and President Saakashvili dismissed the justice minister, Khatuna Kalmakhelidze.
Three days before the election, around 100,000 people, including many students, demonstrated in Tbilisi. The protest was led mainly by the opposition parties and student organizations.
Many of the protesters, however, spoke out against both political parties. David Parulava, a student who had protested against the ill treatment in prisons, told the online media outlet Eurasianet that the choice between Saakashvili and Ivanishvili was “a choice between bad and worse, and I’m not even sure who’s bad and who’s worse. I trust neither side.”
Is Georgia the «Beacon of Democracy» or an oasis of neoliberal dictatorship? Here.
Thousands rallied again on Friday in Georgia to demand the prosecution of ministers fired in a prison abuse scandal.
The protests, sparked by graphic videos showing guards in the Gldani prison in Tbilisi brutally beating prisoners and raping them with truncheons and broom handles, have ratcheted up the pressure on President Mikhail Saakashvili.
He has sought to contain the damage by sacking prison bosses but, despite that, protesters increased their demands as rallies went into a third day.
They inisted that Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaya and others be brought to justice.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered overnight outside Gldani, stopping several prison vans and asking prisoners inside whether they had been abused.
Protesters also gathered outside another prison in the city of Rustavi.
Graphic Video Material Points to Need for Accountability
September 19, 2012
(Berlin) – Video footage broadcast on Georgian television on September 18, 2012, depicts sexual and other abuse of inmates in a notorious prison in Georgia, which should be subject to criminal investigation, Human Rights Watch said today. The government of Georgia should conduct a prompt, thorough, and independent investigation into the abuse, hold those found responsible accountable, and ensure the victims a remedy.
A Georgian corrections official stated publicly that the head of the penitentiary department has been dismissed as a result of the abuse and that several other officials have been arrested. Acts of a criminal nature, such as assault and including sexual assault, should be subject to criminal investigations and prosecutions, and not simply disciplinary sanctions, Human Rights Watch said.
“The abuse captured in this footage is profoundly disturbing,” said Giorgi Gogia, senior Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities need to ensure full accountability—including criminal accountability—for this abuse and take measures to prevent it from ever happening again.”
Human Rights Watch also said that those under suspicion for involvement in the abuse should be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.
On September 18, the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying it had opened an investigation into ill-treatment in Gldani Prison No.8 against prisoners by “certain penitentiary department employees.” The statement included a link to video footage allegedly taken by one of the former employees of the prison administration depicting physical assault on prisoners by members of the prison administration.
That evening, a talk show on Maestro television station broadcast further video materials depicting Gldani prison officials beating, insulting, and humiliating newly arrived inmates at Gldani prison No. 8. Shortly afterward, another TV station, TV9, aired further video footage vividly and graphically depicting rape of prisoners by prison staff.
The Interior Ministry statement acknowledged the ill-treatment. However, it claimed that several prison officials video recorded the abuse as part of a “previously elaborated plot” by one of the inmates, who convinced several prison staff to carry it out in exchange for “substantial reimbursement.”
Georgia’s human rights ombudsman has often referred to Gldani Prison No. 8 as one of Georgia’s most problematic prison facilities. In a 2010 report, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture said that former inmates of the Gldani prison alleged that staff had punched, kicked, and struck them with truncheons during the intake process and as punishment for such actions as talking loudly or attempting to communicate with prisoners from other cells. The report also said it found “an uncommon silence” by prisoners the committee met in the prison.
Georgian authorities have an obligation under international human rights law not only to effectively investigate all allegations of ill-treatment and torture, but to enforce criminal sanctions against those identified as criminally responsible, Human Rights Watch said. Victims of the abuse are also entitled to a legally enforceable remedy for their violations, Human Rights Watch said.
“Sexual assault on a detainee constitutes torture,” Gogia said. “The prohibition on torture is absolute, and the government should ensure that the justice is done.”
Organiser Fathi al-Baadani said the rally is also a protest against the government’s sluggishness to release the detainees despite an order to review their cases and set them free.
The delay is due to the fact that Saleh’s followers still hold influential security and military positions, Baadani claimed.
Many thousands had demonstrated on the Friday against the continuing role of relatives of ex-president Saleh in the police and armed forces.
Yemen Human Rights Minister Huriya Mashhour confirmed the number of detained protesters and added that others are also being held in unofficial detention centres.
Prime Minister Salem Mohammed Bassindwa has publicly expressed strong dissatisfaction over the lack of action to free the prisoners.
Prison Industries: “Don’t Let Society Improve or We Lose Business”
Thursday, 26 April 2012 10:20
One out of every 100 people in the United States is imprisoned. Even though we are 5 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of the prisoners in the world. We are number one in the world in the number of people we imprison – we even beat China. A normal reaction to this situation would be to try to reform our laws, our judicial system – including sentencing – our prison system and our society so that we would not have the disconcerting distinction of being the number-one jailer in the world.
Instead, in the past decade, there has been a movement to privatize more and more of our state and federal prisons to save money (which has not materialized) and ease overcrowding under the pressure of the courts. This has led to a wide world of influence peddling, self-dealing and lobbying while preying on a captured group of people to fill prison beds. Just as I have feared that privatizing the logistics of war will encourage private war-service industries to lobby for a hot war or long occupation to keep their industries viable, there has emerged a group of prison industries, state and federal legislators, and other players who will continue to benefit from our disgraceful ranking as the world’s largest warden.
There are two very large and influential prison companies in the United States who are manipulating the system to make sure they have plenty of business: The GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In the first part of this two-part series, I will explore The GEO Group’s influence peddling; next week, I will look at CCA.
If you have any doubt in your mind that improving society and lowering the number of prisoners in our country (normally considered a worthy social goal) is a threat to the prison industry business, all you need to do is to read about that concern in The GEO Group’s 2011 annual report:
In particular, the demand for our correctional and detention facilities and services and BI’s [a prison industry company Geo acquired in 2011] services could be adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws. For example, any changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities. Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.
This is an industry that needs misery, long sentences, rounded-up undocumented immigrants and increasing crime to flourish. In order to keep the prison beds filled, The GEO Group and others have paid out millions of dollars to lobbyists, federal and state legislators, and governors to allow our immigration problem to go unsolved, to make sure that no drugs are decriminalized and that an ineffective War on Drugs continues, and to make certain that long term prison sentences, like California’s three-strikes-and-you’re-imprisoned-for-life laws, keep a steady flow of revenue and profits flowing to their shareholders. They are also hoping that our national drop in crime is just a temporary trend.
According to California-drug-treatment.com: “Justice statistics also show that 47.5 percent of drug arrests in 2007 were for marijuana offenses. Also, almost 60 percent of state prison inmates who are serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence or of any significant selling activity.” One can imagine that The GEO Group and others in the industry would be very concerned about the myriad of legislative bills and ballot initiatives floating around the country that threaten to legalize marijuana and reduce their number of paying “beds.”
America’s Top Prison Corporation: A Study in Predatory Capitalism and Cronyism. Dina Rasor, Truthout: “This week, I will tackle the largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and its unprecedented proposal to buy prisons from money-strapped states, as well as how CCA has gamed the system with trips through the revolving door, self-dealing and influence peddling. Just to set the stage as to how large the prison population is in the United States: our prison population is the highest in the world; one out of 100 US residents are in prison”: here.
Isn’t It Criminal to Put People in Prison so Corporations and Individuals Can Make a Profit? Here.
The Unbelievable Brutality Unleashed on Kids in For-Profit Prisons: here.
How America’s Largest Private Prison Operator Plans to Beat Corporate Income Tax. Christopher Francis Petrella, Truthout: “Although many on the left have rightly repudiated the myriad manifestations of prison privatization characterized, in part, by involuntary prison labor, ongoing health and safety violations, corporate financing and even ‘the New Jim Crow,’ few, if any, have called attention to the relatively obscure relationship between private prison companies and their IRS corporate classification filing status. Surprisingly, IRS filing designations might offer the public its clearest glimpse into the intentions of private prison companies behind closed doors”: here.
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: “Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has ample reasons to pat itself on the back: … several of its facilities got over 98 percent ratings for ‘safety and security’ and it rounded off 2011 with a net income of $40.5 million in earnings. But below the spin is a different reality for the company and the prisoners that it oversees – food riots and abuse scandals”: here.
Christine Cegelis, Truthout: “There is probably no greater waste of our taxpayer money than the increased incarceration of our population. The state of Illinois had a prison population of 7,326 inmates in 1970; in 2012, the number has risen to over 48,000. Over that period of time, the state’s population has grown only by 12 percent. The average cost of incarceration is approximately $30,000 a year, and our Department of Corrections (DOC) has a budget of over $1.5 billion”: here.
Private Prisons Spend $45 Million on Lobbying, Rake in $5.1 Billion for Immigrant Detention Alone. Aviva Shen, ThinkProgress: “Nearly half of all immigrants detained by federal officials are held in facilities run by private prison companies, at an average cost for each detained immigrant is $166 a night. That’s added up to massive profits for Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group and other private prison companies”: here.
Mark Karlin, Truthout: “Michelle Alexander: The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the social, economic, and political challenges of our time. It is, in my view, the moral equivalent of Jim Crow”: here.
Human Rights, Neo-liberalism and Mass Incarceration: here.
Frances Webber, vice chair of the Institute of Race Relations, accused Barnardo’s — Britain’s biggest children’s charity — of providing ‘a cloak of legitimacy to the continued detention of children’. Former children’s commissioner for England and internationally renowned paediatrican Sir Al Aynsley-Green wrote in OurKingdom that this ‘worrying development’ sparked the question: ‘Are the big children’s organisations effective advocates for children, or are they friends of government?’
Stung by such criticism Barnardo’s chief executive Anne Marie Carrie last month made comments widely reported as a tough-talking ‘ultimatum’ to UKBA, saying the charity would pull out of the working partnership if children and families were not treated properly. But can we trust Barnardo’s to stand up to the government?
We, being students and members of SOAS Detainee Support who visit immigration detainees and offer them support, have campaigned hard against child detention. In May last year we picketed G4S’s annual meeting, argued with the company’s chief executive Nick Buckles (who, by the way, is paid almost £5000 every day), and landed a picture in the Daily Telegraph’s city pages. In June last year, we ran the Release Carnival, bringing together campaigners and child refugees to march on Downing Street.
When this past March Barnardo’s threw in its lot with Nick Buckles and the UK Border Agency we felt utterly dismayed, let down, betrayed. When we visited Barnardo’s HQ at Barkingside in Essex to express our disappointment. We were sent away and told to study Barnardo’s website so we’d understand what they were doing. We read. It still looked wrong. We made a second visit, intending to distribute a leaflet outlining our objections to staff as they left work. Barnardo’s diverted workers to a rear exit.
USA: In a July 2006 article for The Progressive, the late Howard Zinn provides a context for today’s immigration reform debate by tracing the history of how we’ve treated foreign-born people in this country since the Revolutionary War.
Australian High Court overrules refugee “Malaysia solution”: here.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday announced that she would introduce legislation into parliament next week aimed at circumventing a High Court ruling that struck down the proposed deportation of hundreds of asylum seekers to Malaysia: here.
End Child Detention Now campaigners have welcomed the launch of the International Detention Coalition’s Global report and campaign to end immigration detention of children: here.
A new report by an international research body has called for detention of refugee children to be outlawed and for all countries to “ensure the rights and liberty” of children affected by immigration detention. Australian immigration detention figures released on March 25 showed that even after the federal government “completes” transferring children to “community detention”, hundreds of underage asylum seekers will stay in immigration detention centres: here.
The activity of British-based transnational conglomerate Serco in Australia has remained relatively unknown since it began taking government contracts in 1990. That is until the refugees locked up in its detention centres — under a $756 million government contract — started speaking out.
Horrific suicides, hunger strikes, self-harm, riotous protests, burning buildings and under-trained staff have finally put Serco in the headlines.
The unrelenting revolt of refugees in detention has called into question Serco’s huge contract with the federal government and whether a private company can be held accountable when refugees’ rights are violated.
Before visiting the Curtin detention centre in far-north Western Australia in early April as part of a solidarity convoy, Victoria Martin-Iverson told Green Left Weekly she knew the conditions would be grim.
“This is a humanitarian and psychiatric crisis,” she said. “We charge a private company with the responsibility of delivering services to people in detention, but they cut costs every way and anyway they can.
“It makes a profit off the misery of asylum seekers, off the illegal imprisonment of people who have not committed or been charged with a crime.”
In November, Serco’s contract was doubled from $370 million to $756 million. But the May 14 Herald Sun said Serco would soon be paid more than $1 billion as the cost per asylum seeker detained rises.
It is one of the largest air traffic control operators in the world. It runs most of Britain’s traffic lights, as well as its nuclear program, and has contracts for Britain’s weapons and defence systems. It is a provider of services from security to cleaning to many private companies.
“This is a private company that very aggressively markets itself as a solution to government,” Martin-Iverson said.
“In Australia they are already bidding for child welfare services, parole, foster care, transport, custodial services, cleaning services.
“There is no single public service that the government supplies that Serco is not actively and aggressively lobbying to have the contract for.”
A charity condemned Britain today over its “appalling” treatment of torture victims claiming asylum, who, as a result, risk being returned to the very countries which tortured them: here.
Britain: Controversial privateer Serco is bidding to secure a multimillion-pound contract to run one of David Cameron’s flagship “Big Society” shemes: here.
