Why privatise jail escort service?
You might be interested to know that this proposal has in fact already been given serious consideration by a Department of Justice expert committee, whose findings are completely at odds with Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s drive to privatise.
The Department of Justice’s prison service staffing and operations review team (SORT) released a report to Mr McDowell in July 2002 on the prison escort service, with a view to improving efficiencies and reducing overtime costs.
This expert committee found it was not reasonable to conclude that privatisation would necessarily be cheaper or more efficient than a restructured escort service maintained in the public sector.
Rather than privatisation, SORT recommended that a centrally managed escort system be created and run within the public service.
Ignoring the recommendations of his own experts is but one of several examples showing that the minister has no interest in pursuing the type of evidence-based consideration suggested in your editorial.
For example, Mr McDowell admitted in answers to parliamentary questions that his department is unable to “comprehensively identify” the current cost of the escort service or provide assurances that a privatised service would result in cost savings.
More troubling still is the minister’s admission that “no detailed research was undertaken into the experience of privatised prisoner transport in other jurisdictions.”
How can the minister promise significant cost savings from a privatised escort scheme when his department cannot identify with any certainty the cost of the current system, and when his own experts found that claims of cost savings could not rightfully be made?
How can he claim that a privatised scheme will be more efficient when he admits having done no research into existing schemes in other jurisdictions?
Only a few weeks ago Mr McDowell was openly questioning the fitness of private security firms safely and efficiently to handle cash transits.
How then can he seriously propose that private security companies be given the responsibility of transporting prisoners?
Given these admissions, and with no evidence to the contrary being provided by the minister, it would seem that this is a case of public policy being made on the back of an envelope based on ideology rather than evidence.
Rick Lines
Executive Director
Irish Penal Reform Trust
53 Parnell Square West
Dublin 1
