A decision to renew a private prison contract at a facility claimed to be rife with violence, understaffed and awash with drugs will leave a premier with “blood on his hands”, unions claim.
The South Australian government has extended multinational prison operator Serco’s contract to manage the Adelaide Remand Centre for five years.
Unions had campaigned for the prison to return to public hands when Serco’s current $115 million contract expires in August.
Community and Public Sector Union federal secretary Stewart Little said the decision was a betrayal of correctional officers around the country.
“Clearly South Australian Labor are in bed with big business and Serco,” Mr Little said.
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“Peter Malinauskas should hang his head in shame, he will have blood on his hands for this decision.”
Correctional Services Minister Michael Brown said the former Liberal Marshall Government in 2019 had entered into a seven-year contract with a five-year renewal period that was difficult to unwind without incurring significant cost to taxpayers.
“I take the management of the Adelaide Remand Centre extremely seriously and I will continue to work closely with the Public Service Association, United Workers Union and Serco to ensure safety,” he said.
Mr Little said, while other Labor governments had been bringing prisons back into the public sector – including the NSW government with Junee and Parklea prisons last year, the SA government had decided to continue Liberal government policy.
The McKell Institute on May 7 delivered a scathing assessment of the centre’s privatisation, concluding it had failed on cost, safety, staffing, and accountability grounds.
The cost per prisoner at the centre was higher than at public facilities, daily officer numbers had fallen from 70 to 20, and assaults on staff and prisoners had doubled over five years, the report found.
McKell Institute SA and NT executive director Hannah MacLeod said privatisation had fundamentally failed to deliver efficiency, safety, or value for money.
“We’ve found that the minor savings achieved come entirely at the expense of leaner staffing models,” she said.
“This chronic understaffing has severely compromised prisoner rehabilitation, extended lockdowns, and created a volatile environment that puts both staff and inmates at unacceptable risk.”
In March, the Public Service Association revealed a remand centre inmate transferring to Yatala Labour Prison in January was found in possession of 10 grams of cocaine when he arrived.
The association’s general secretary Charlotte Watson said the report proved privatising prisons skimmed profit at the direct expense of proper staffing and safety.
“You have a private operator flying in staff … just to keep the doors open, you have massive quantities of cocaine gliding through reception – what more do you need to see to know the system is broken?” she said.
