20 June 2003
The union representing prison officers has called on ministers to rethink the government's support for privately financed jails after a report by an influential spending watchdog claimed they were no better than their public sector equivalents.
Following the publication of a National Audit Office study of Private Finance Initiative-funded prisons, published on June 18, the Prison Officers Association said the government had 'firm and independent evidence' that the PFI had brought 'no substantial improvements to the UK's penal system'.
Auditors found that although PFI jails were 'bringing benefits' to the Prison Service, the best privately funded sites, Parc and Altcourse, performed only as well as the best public prisons, while the worst PFI site, Ashfield, was 'among the worst in the [entire] prison estate'.
The NAO also found that although PFI jails had improved the standards of staff-prisoner relationships and 'helped the drive to improve decency in publicly managed prisons', performance against their individual contract specifications had been mixed.
In particular, the watchdog said, there were growing fears about safety and security at some PFI sites.
The report has been viewed as another blow to the Home Office's penal policy, as ministers have regularly claimed that the introduction of the PFI would lead to substantial improvements. The conditions in UK jails have also been the subject of stinging criticism by the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, in recent weeks.
Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, told Public Finance that the 'time had come for a major rethink on penal policy' in the wake of the report.
'PFI prisons were built as state-of-the-art institutions,' he said. 'They are costly, they promised significant management advantages and yet they are delivering no better services than the public sector sites that politicians claim are out of date. We have to ask why.'
Caton blames a culture of 'penny-pinching' by firms involved in running PFI prisons. 'It comes as no surprise to hear that PFI prisons are failing on issues of safety and security. They are under-staffed because firms cannot make the required cash savings unless they cut costs.'
NAO chief Sir John Bourn said: 'The experience of the prison sector shows that the use of the PFI is neither a guarantee of success nor the cause of inevitable failure.'
PFjun2003
