Prison privatisation: Who runs the show?

LETTER | Darkness finally comes to light as after his recent working trip to the UK, the deputy home minister discovered a solution to resolve the country’s little-knownbut yet significant problem - overcrowding in local prisons.

As revealed by Mohd Azis Jamman, all prisons located across the country are overcrowded by 40 percent and the number is unlikely to go down unless practical and sustainable initiatives are taken by the government. In his speech during the closing ceremony of the Prison Reform Colloquium at the Prisons Department headquarters, Azis also voiced that maintaining and managing prisons were very costly. Hence, he proposed a privately-managed and privately-funded prison system to curb these problems.

So how does a private prison work? Prison privatisation connects the government facing a deficit prison capacity with a private company or firm that can cater for this capacity. The firm then will undertake the full responsibility of managing day-to-day operations of the prison facility such as recruiting the workforce, disciplining prisoners, stocking supplies, providing legally-mandated programmes and so on. 

As practised in developed countries like the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, the government will, in return, pay the firm on a per-inmate-per-day basis.

Contracts and agreements between the firm and the government are usually preceded to ensure the firm generates a sustainable profit to run its “prison business” and to reduce damages. One common requirement is to keep the prison at capacity or pay for unused, empty beds. 

Therefore, most private prisons in the world exercise “lockup quotas” whereby minimum occupancy rates are given and agreed upon by both the firm and the government. The government is obligated to pay the firm as per the agreed minimum occupancy rate in the event occupancy in the private prison is lower than the minimum rate.

In foreign countries, minimum occupancy rates vary from prison to prison, ranging from 65 percent as the lowest rate, and the highest can go up to 100 percent or so-called "full bed guarantees". 

Thus, is it really feasible to adopt a private prison system in Malaysia? Or in other words, engaging a third party to run the business on behalf of the government and being back-charged at every end of the month? Well, at least that's something for us to ponder for months to come.

Although the prison privatisation proposal in Malaysia is still in the preliminary stage, lets hope the new government can weigh up every aspect related to this new and never-before undertaken scheme in the best interests of its citizens.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.