Exposing the cannibalistic underbelly of UK for-profit prisons – a case against the privatisation of prisons and the exploitation of UK prison labour
Introduction:
Every day bodies disappear into the UK prison system, their exploited labour feeding profits to private prison companies - an industry now worth billions of pounds.
These bodies are disproportionately the bodies of non-white people, with Black people imprisoned at nearly five times the rate of White people.[1] The Lammy Review also reports that despite comprising only a small section of the overall population, ethnic minorities are still more likely to be imprisoned,[2] with 27% of UK prisoners identifying as an ethnic minority.[3]
This blog makes a case against the privatisation of prisons, arguing that privatisation has been largely responsible for creating a heavily exploited and racialised underclass in the form of prisoners. To make this case we will explore how the move to privatisation and the legal framework surrounding UK prisons, have enabled this exploitation.
Privatisation of the UK prison sector: origins and impacts:
First of all, what even is the privatisation of the UK prison sector?
The privatisation of prisons first developed under Thatcher’s government, an era defined by the move to the neoliberal policies of free enterprise.[4] Since then, the UK’s prison sector has rapidly become increasingly privatised and is now one of the most privatised in the world, paralleling the US in its scale,[5] with the UK “second only to the US in the number of privately run prisons”.[6] In fact, in some ways, the UK’s private prison industry supersedes the US, with privately owned prisons holding 15% of prisoners in England and Wales compared to 9% in the US.[7]
As the number of privately owned UK prisons continues to grow in scale, the probability of this industry only continues to rise. Companies responsible for the management of UK prisons now report profits and turnovers in the billions. For example, G4S Justice Services, a major private prison management company, saw their “turnover in 2011 [rise] 4.7 per cent to £7.5 billion”.[8]
Why is this important?
The increasing involvement of private companies in UK prisons is crucial as it shifts the aim of the prison and deprioritises the supposed purpose of the prison as sites of rehabilitation.[9]
If the ideal aim of the prison system is to reform prisoners and deter crime, the introduction of private interests fundamentally changes this. This is due to private companies having a significant stake in the growth of prison populations as more prisoners means more profits. This highlights the exploitation of prisoners in the UK prison system as the privatisation of prisons means prisoners operate as profit-making machines[10] by feeding the functioning of this machine.[11] This is evidenced by the failure of English prisons in reintegrating ex-prisoners back into society, as “(44%) [of adults] are reconvicted of another offence within one year of release.”[12]
The pattern of decreasing crime rates in conjunction with a rapidly growing prison population[13], further seems to add weight to the argument that the increasing involvement of private interests in English prisons has made the prisoner a form of capital to be exploited. This is because private prison companies have an incentive to see the growth of the prison and therefore favour the continual exploitation of racialised bodies in prison rather than decreasing prison populations.
Photo credit: Pexels
How does the law help to create exploitative labour conditions in prisons?
This leads us now to the law surrounding the UK prison system. The law has played a significant role in making the prison a highly profitable venture for private companies by failing to provide protections to the labour of prisoners.[14]In this way, the law has arguably legitimised the exploitation of prisoners by creating “super exploitable workforces”.[15] The lack of protection of prison labour has given private prison companies access to making large profits on the management of prisoners and their labour,[16] owing to the reasons analysed below.
Firstly, the law has allowed the exploitation of prisoners by barring working prisoners from statutory provisions that protect the worker[17].
Section 45(1) of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 states that “[a] prisoner does not qualify for the national minimum wage in respect of any work which he does in pursuance of prison rules.”[18] This reflects that the law has in effect barred working prisoners from the classification of a worker and consequently made these prisoners vulnerable to exploitation. As working prisoners do not have to be paid minimum wage according to the Act[19], private companies are able to therefore capitalise on this by giving out low wages to working prisoners.
This lack of legal protection in combination with the rapid increase in privatisation of prisons, highlights how the management of prisoners and their labour has become an extremely profitable site of revenue for private companies to exploit.
Secondly, the law has distinguished between the labour of prisoners and the standard worker, therefore leaving the prisoners in a state where they are especially vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of private prison companies[20]. The ‘Prison Service Order 4460 (PSO 4460)’ in Annex B, which states the “[m]inimum employed rate of pay is £4-00 per week”[21] seems to reinforce this claim. This is in comparison to the National Minimum Wage for 18-20-year-olds, which in the same period as the PSO 4460 took effect (January 2020), was “£6.15”[22] per hour in comparison.
The disparity in minimum pay, highlights the lack of legal protection for working prisoners compared to a standard worker. This elucidates how the law not only fails to recognise or classify prisoners as workers but classifies them as the “underclass”.[23] In this way, the exploitation of prisoners is legitimised, with “prison labour being constructed as an ‘othered’ and potentially less-than-human workforce”.[24]
The characterisation of prisoners as an underclass enables private companies to treat prisoners as a source of income. This leads to privately owned prisons, which effectively run as businesses, often having worse living conditions for prisoners in an effort to cut back expenses. It was found that “the worst PFI prison was worse than comparable public prisons across a range of indicators”.[25] For-profit prisons also showed a greater risk for problems with under-staffing for example.[26]
Photo credit: Pexels
Conclusion - So, what now?
The involvement of private interests in prisons has turned UK prisons into unchecked and unregulated breeding grounds for exploitation. It is imperative that we do not ignore how the law has enabled this by failing to provide any protections to the labour of prisoners.
Ultimately, if we claim to see prisons as a place for justice, the privatisation of the UK prison sector clearly contradicts this logic. We must aim to build a world where punishment is not for profit. We cannot continue to allow corporations to line their pockets on the suffering and exploitation of prisoners, who they are supposed to rehabilitate. Instead, we must look to building a reality where prisoners are not simply reduced to capital, but a world where prisoners have equal worker protections.
[1] Sarah X Pemberton, ‘Criminal Justice as State Racism: Race-Making, State Violence, and Imprisonment in the USA, and England and Wales’ (2015) 37 New Political Science 321 <https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2015.1056429 > accessed 18 November 2024, p.334
[2] Lammy D, ‘The Lammy Review’ (2017) <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a82009040f0b62305b91f49/lammy-review-final-report.pdf> accessed 11 November 2024
[3] Georgina Sturge and Helena Carthew ‘UK Prison Population Statistics’ (Commons Library Research Briefing, 8 September 2023) <https://commonslibrary.parli/ament.uk/research-briefings/sn04334/> accessed 18 November 2024, p.14
[4] David Pozen ‘Managing a Correctional Marketplace: Prison Privatization in the United States and the United Kingdom’ (Columbia Law School, 2004) <https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2306&context=faculty_scholarship> accessed 18 November, p.261
[5] Nehal Panchamia, ‘Competition in Prisons’ (Institute for government) <https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Prisons%20briefing%20final.pdf> accessed 11 November, p.1
[6] Ibid.
[7] Calum Rosie, ‘Private Prisons Have Shown A Lax Approach To Human Rights’ (Each Other, 26 April 2021) <
https://eachother.org.uk/private-prisons-have-shown-a-lax-approach-to-human-rights/#:~:text=But%2C%20in%20fact%2C%20the%20UK%20has%20a%20considerably,in%20the%20United%20States%2C%20which%20stands%20at%209%25.> accessed 18 November 2024
[8] Vicki Helyar-Cardwell ‘Delivering Justice The role of the public, private and voluntary sectors in prisons and probation’ (Criminal Justice Alliance, May 2012) s<https://www.criminaljusticealliance.org/cja-resources/delivering-justice-the-role-of-the-public-private-and-voluntary-sectors-in-prisons-and-probation/ > accessed 1 November 2024, p.42
[9] Ministry of Justice, Prisons Strategy White Paper – Response to Consultation Questions (White Paper CP 686. 2022) <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62a71a37d3bf7f03744c7c4a/prisons-strategy-white-paper-govt-response.pdf> accessed 10 November 2024, p.3
[10] Elaine Genders, ‘Legitimacy, Accountability and Private Prisons’ (2002) 4 Punishment & Society 285 <https://doi.org/10.1177/146247402400426752 > accessed 11 October 2024, p.288
[11] Eve Goldberg, The prison industrial complex and the global economy (PM Press 2009), p.08
[12] Prison Reform Trust ‘Prison: the facts—Summer 2022’ (2022) <https://prisonreformtrust.org.uk/publication/prison-the-facts-summer-2022/> accessed 28 October, p.3
[13] Mick Ryan and Tony Ward, ‘Prison Abolition in the UK: They Dare Not Speak Its Name?’ (2014) 4 Social Justice <http://www.jstor.org/stable/24361635> accessed 11 November 2024, p.107
[14] Virginia Mantouvalou, ‘Structural Injustice and the Human Rights of Workers’ (2020) 73 Current Legal Problems 59 <https://academic-oup-com.bris.idm.oclc.org/clp/article/73/1/59/5918202?login=true> accessed 11 November 2024, p.66
[15] Kathyrn Cassidy, Paul Griffin and Felicity Wray, ‘Labour, Carcerality and Punishment: “Less-than-Human” Labour Landscapes’ (2019) 44 Progress in Human Geography 1081 <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/0309132519869454> accessed 12 November 2024, p.1087
[16] Ibid.
[17] Mantouvalou V, ‘Structural Injustice and the Human Rights of Workers’ (2020) 73 Current Legal Problems 59 <https://academic-oup-com.bris.idm.oclc.org/clp/article/73/1/59/5918202?login=true> accessed 13 November 2024 p.66
[18] National Minimum Wage Act 1998, s 45(1)
[19] Ibid.
[20] Virginia Mantouvalou, ‘Structural Injustice and the Human Rights of Workers’ (2020) 73 Current Legal Problems 59 <https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cuaa003> accessed 13 November 2024, p.73
[21] Annex B in Prisoners’ Pay, Order 2020, SI 2020/4460
[22] ‘National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates’ https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates> accessed 12 November 2024
[23] John Rex and others, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis (Routledge and K Paul 1979), p.16
[24] Kathyrn Cassidy, Paul Griffin and Felicity Wray, ‘Labour, Carcerality and Punishment: “Less-than-Human” Labour Landscapes’ (2019) 44 Progress in Human Geography 1081 <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/0309132519869454> accessed April 2024, p.1092
[25] Michael Teague, ‘Neoliberalism, prisons and probation in the United States and England and Wales’ in Phillip Whitehead and Paul Crawshaw (eds), Organising Neoliberalism: Markets, Privatisation and Justice (Anthem Press 2014), p.67
[26] Sarah X Pemberton, ‘Criminal Justice as State Racism: Race-Making, State Violence, and Imprisonment in the USA, and England and Wales’ (2015) 37 New Political Science 321 <https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2015.1056429 > accessed 15 October 2024, p.336