USA Prison Privateers: Neo-colonialists in a Southern Land (From Private Prisons and Police: Recent Australian Trends, P 125-138, 1994, Paul Moyle, ed. - See NCJ-160698)

• NCJ Number: 160703
• Author(s): E Baldry
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Pluto Press Austrialia Limited
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Australia
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This analysis of the decisions by corrections agencies in New Zealand and Australia to privatize corrections through contracts with companies based in the United States focuses on the models being purchased, the credentials of the corporations, the reasons for asking United States companies to operate correctional institutions, and the implications of these decisions.

Abstract

The current contracting of Australian prisons to private corporations with their bases in the United States is only the most recent development in United States entrepreneurial expansion. However, the introduction of the United States private prison model to Australia and its ready acceptance has been an example of entrepreneurial colonization hastily invited without proper examination. By introducing private prisons, Australian governments are adding to the imprisonment mentality rather than encouraging shifts away from it. This trend also raises wider cultural and social matters. Australian governments seem not to have considered either the propriety of contracting with such corporations to operate their prisons or the cultural ethos such a colonization brings with it. In addition, the New South Wales and Queensland governments did not appear to scrutinize multinational contractors properly. Moreover discussions about Australia's need to develop a unique identity apart from Great Britain have ignored the exposure to a recolonization in the framework of a totalitarian United States business democracy. 29 references (Author abstract modified)