Prison Privatisation and the Remand Population: Principle Versus Pragmatism?

Abstract

This article draws on our recently published evaluation of HMP Wolds, the first contracted-out prison in the United Kingdom. The authors argue that prison privatisation in England and Wales was a direct consequence of the increase in the remand population in the 1980s and the deteriorating conditions of their custody; that the response of Group 4 in designing a regime for Wolds was directly influenced by their awareness of the remand status of the prisoners they were to manage; that some of the problems that emerged in the first year of Wolds stemmed directly from the particular circumstances of remand prisoners; and that Wolds' response to these problems resulted in regime modifications relying on more traditional approaches, compromising Wolds' original ethos and resulting in convergence with the publicsector prisons. In addition, the authors argue that these changes reflected a response to the social status shared by all prisoners rather than the legal status which is unique to remand prisoners and this, arguably, has contributed towards a deterioration in the standards that Wolds initially offered to remand prisoners. 1

Legitimacy, accountability and private prisons

“…The specific inclusion of prisons within the privatization programme may also be seen as part of the dispersal of responsibility for crime control as a result of the failure of the modernist project of scientific correctionalism and the absence of any reduction in crime (Garland, 2001). Yet, at a pragmatic level, it has been argued that private prisons would almost certainly not have been introduced when and how they were without the very specific catalyst of the problems surrounding the remand population in England and Wales which grew by a massive 76 percent (from 6629 to 11,667) between 1979and 1988(Home Office, 1989James and Bottomley, 1998). Since then the prison population (both sentenced and remand) has continued to grow apace.…”