Birmingham prison and the private sector

02Apr11

The news this week that Birmingham prison is the first public sector prison to be privatised, following a market testing exercise ordered by the last government, came as something of a surprise.  Here’s why.

Birmingham is a massive prison, with almost 1,500 prisoners, and suffers from many problems associated with local prisons, including chronic overcrowding, few activities for prisoners, as well as a constant churn of prisoners in and out, with many being jailed far from home.  These are all largely problems that are systemic, and outside of any particular provider’s control.

What about the things that a provider might influence?  In the most recent of a series of critical inspectorate reports, the Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote that “a high proportion of prisoners said that they felt unsafe at Birmingham” and that “staff-prisoner relationships remained a considerable weakness at Birmingham”.

Given that safety and poor staff-prisoner relations are key problems at Birmingham, it is odd that the government has decided that the private sector would be better placed to run this huge, complex institution. Because concerns around safety and poor staff-prisoner relations are common features of private sector prisons.

The National Audit Office overview of the performance of PFI prisons found that they do not “perform as well on safety [in comparison to public sector prisons]. For example, there are relatively high levels of assaults in PFI prisons…In our qualitative interviews, prisoners also expressed concerns about safety issues related to the relative inexperience of staff in private prisons.”

Staff at the lower levels in private prisons do tend to be inexperienced in comparison to Prison Service employees.  This is because private prisons pay their prison officers considerably less than their public sector counterparts (although at the most senior levels of governor grade this contrast is reversed).  The prison service pay review body found that there was a 39% lead in average basic pay for public sector prison officers over private sector prison officers.  This was raised to a staggering 61% once holiday and pension benefits were factored in.  By paying the vast majority of their staff less, the private provider can offer the sort of ‘efficiencies’ that will look good in any market testing exercise.

One of the key factors in good staff-prisoner relations, on the other hand, is a decent ratio of staff to prisoners.  The fewer staff and the more prisoners, and the more staff will need to rely on static security such as bars, gates and CCTV.

Not only do private sector prisons tend to employ poorly paid and inexperienced staff, but they also tend to employ less of them.  A recent parliamentary question on prison manpower found that while the ratio of public sector staff to prisoners is 1 officer for every 3.03 prisoners, the ratio of private sector staff to prisoners is 1 officer for every 3.78 prisoners.

Setting aside ethical objections to introducing the profit motive to punishment, the evidence that the private sector can succeed with Birmingham where the public sector failed is thin on the ground.  Indeed, the evidence suggests that the private sector might actually do a lot worse.

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