Prison workers’ unions slam outsourcing disaster

Unions representing prison workers welcomed the government’s announcement last month that Birmingham prison will return to the public sector. 


The POA prison officers’ union called on the government to “abandon its mixed market dogma” and ensure all new-build prisons remain in the public sector to ensure safety, order, control, rehabilitation and accountability. 


The PCS public and commercial services union said the award of HMP Birmingham to G4S in 2011 was a “cross-party disaster”, referring to the market testing of the jail brought in by the last Labour government in 2009, with a contract eventually awarded to G4S by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government in 2011. 


The PCS said it welcomed a commitment that a future Labour government would “put an end to the scandal of our prisons being run for private profit”. The union also called for a moratorium on all further prison and justice privatisation until a full, independent inquiry has examined the cost, viability and morality of such practices. 


Meanwhile, the Unite general union said prisons minister Rory Stewart, who last year threatened to resign if he has not managed to reduce drugs and violence levels in 10 target jails by August, should terminate all outsourced contracts related to prisons in England as speedily as possible.