Andrew Coyle, Sr. Editor
Dr. Coyle is the Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies in the University of London, UK. He has had 25 years' experience at a senior level in the prison services of the United Kingdom. He has a PhD in criminology from the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of a number of books and articles on issues concerning criminal justice and prisoners rights and has extensive international experience on prison matters, having visited prison systems in many countries as an expert consultant for bodies such as the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

Sir Nigel Rodley, Preface
Sir Nigel Rodley is Professor of Law at the University of Essex. He has recently stepped down from his position as United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Prison Studies. In 1999 he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of services to human rights and international law.

Allison Campbell
Ms. Campbell is a Master of Arts candidate in the Department of Sociology at Simon Fraser University, in the area of women’s corrections and state ruling practices. Her work examines the changing shape of corrections for federally sentenced women during the 1990s in Canada, looking at how institutional processes maintained and reinforced the relations of ruling, despite discourse to the contrary.

Rodney Neufeld
Mr. Neufeld is a research associate at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge where he works on diverse issues of public international law. He is a graduate of the University of Manitoba (B.A.) and the University of Ottawa (LL.B.).

Notes on Contributors

Elizabeth Alexander
Ms. Alexander is the Director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. A graduate of the Yale Law School, she has litigated many cases challenging health care in prisons and has argued three cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Julie Berg
Ms. Berg is a researcher, affiliated with the Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town, who has been studying the origin and monitoring the development of prison privatization in South Africa.

Alex Friedmann
Mr. Friedmann is a former contributing writer for Prison Legal News, former resources editor for Prison Life magazine, two-time PEN prison writing award winner and member of the Public Safety & Justice Campaign – a coalition dedicated to the abolition of the private prison industry. He served 10 years behind bars, including six years at a private facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

Amanda George
Ms. George is a Victorian community lawyer who for 20 years has been a prison activist. She has received various awards for her work on women in prison including the Australian Avon Spirit of Achievement Award. She has written numerous articles on women in prison and in particular has been active against the privatization of prisons.

Judith Greene
Judith Greene, a criminal-justice-policy analyst, has researched prison privatization under fellowships from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation and the Institute on Criminal Justice of the University of Minnesota Law School.

Donna Habsha
Ms. Habsha is a second year student at the University of Windsor, Faculty of  Law.  She maintains a commitment to the protection and promotion of  children's rights through research, writing and the facilitation of youth empowerment workshops.

Mark Erik Hecht

Kelly Hannah-Moffat
Dr. Hannah-Moffat is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto Mississauga. She worked as a researcher and policy advisor for the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston and is a past president of the Toronto Elizabeth Fry Society. Her book Punishment in Disguise: The Governance of Canadian Women's Federal Imprisonment has just been published by the University of Toronto Press.

Kellie Leclerc Burton
Ms. Leclerc Burton is completing her second year as a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.  Her interests include critical race theory, with a specific focus on Canadian women in conflict with the law, the racialized subject in the criminal justice system and prisoners' rights.  

Joshua Miller
Mr. Miller is a corrections specialist with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' (AFSCME) Department of Research & Collective Bargaining Services. The union represents approximately 80,000 corrections employees in the United States.

Bente Molenaar
Ms. Molenaar is a graduate of Development Studies from the Universities of Carleton (B.A.) and Cambridge (M.Phil). She has worked on human rights issues in association with a number of NGOs.

Dawn Moore
Ms. Moore is completing her PhD at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. She is currently studying the experiences of probationers and parolees in state mandated substance 'abuse' treatment programs. She has been active in attempts to resist the privatization of prisons in Ontario and has written critically (with Kelly Hannah-Moffat) on the overhaul of Ontario's correctional system. Other publications cover issues including date rape drugs, drug testing and alcohol intervention programs.

Monique Morris
Ms. Morris is a senior research associate with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, where she has led several projects since 1998 designed to address racial and gender disparities in the juvenile justice system. Morris has written and spoken extensively on the plight of African American and urban youth, and is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Too Beautiful For Words (Amistad Press: 2001). Morris received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from Columbia University in the City of New York.

Stephen Nathan
Mr. Nathan is a journalist and researcher and editor of Prison Privatisation Report International (www.psiru.org/justice). The writing of both articles was made possible through financial support from the Open Society Foundation.


Christian Parenti
Mr. Parenti has a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of  Economics and is currently a Senior Fellow with the Open Society Institute. He is the author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of  Crisis, (Verso, 2000) and his articles appear in The Nation, The Progressive, the Washington Post, New York Newsday and the Baffler.



Jeff Sinden
Mr. Sinden is a Research Associate at Human Rights Internet and is Managing Editor of HRI's Human Rights Tribune. He is currently a Master's student in International Development at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

Frank Smith
Mr. Smith has been a legislative advocate and community organizer in criminal justice reform and decriminalization of substance abuse for over three decades. In semi-retirement he remains an Alaskan court appointed Guardian ad litem, representing the best interests of children. He is heavily involved in disability advocacy and labor, peace and social justice activism.  In the past ten years he has helped a succession of communities in Alaska and other states to defeat private prison proposals.  He has visited prisoners and public and private penal institutions throughout the United States and Sweden.

Katherine van Wormer
Dr. van Wormer did a participant-observation study at the women's prison in Alabama and is a professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. She is the author of six books including Women and the Criminal Justice System (with C. Bartollas) (2000) and Counseling Female Offenders and Victims: A Strengths-Restorative Approach (2001), as well as Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective, in press.

Phillip Wood
Dr. Wood was educated in Canada and the UK and teaches Comparative and American Politics at Queen's University. His other research work includes projects on the transformation of American politics since the 1970s; the politics of political science research methods; structure, agency and disfranchisement in the Florida fiasco of November 2000; globalization, uneven development and the restructuring of southern textiles; and on the social structure of agriculture and racial politics in the American South before the Voting Rights Act.

Prison privatization is a rapidly increasing phenomenon in many Western countries as governments seek to manage burgeoning prison populations within the constraints of a neo-liberal political agenda. But how is public well being served when prisons are run for profit?

Bringing together a group of the most accomplished writers and activists on human rights and prison privatization, Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights discusses
privatization within its historical and ideological context, and in relation to international standard minimum rules developed by the United Nations in relation to prison management.

Capitalist Punishment examines the adverse effects of private prisons on inmates related to physical and sexual abuse, health care, education, training, and rehabilitation, as corporations seek to maximize profits. It describes the impact on prison staff, from whose salaries corporate profits are wrung, of further cost cutting in the design of facilities and allocation of personnel. Special attention is paid to the effect on vulnerable groups such as women, children, and disproportionately incarcerated minority and indigenous communities.

Even as serious questions emerge in the West as to whether privatized prisons offer a more effective and efficient prison system for either inmates or the public at large, the trend to privatization is spreading. Revealing important links between neo-liberal policies locally and their global effects, Capitalist Punishment offers a disturbing glimpse into the transnational spread of privatized incarceration, as developing nations bound by IMF restrictions are forced into the hands of transnational corporations to the detriment of local incarceration alternatives.

ISBN: 0-932863-35-3  Paper $19.95
   

“Only a few years ago, prison privatization was being touted as a cure-all for the ills of penal systems around the world. Today, mired in disappointing results and awash in scandals, the experiment in privatization is in trouble. This compelling and original book shows, in illuminating detail, why the experiment has not lived up to its promises.”

———ELLIOT CURRIE, author of Crime and Punishment in America
    

Introduction /
by Andrew Coyle, Rodney Neufeld  & Alison Campbell

Chapter 1:  The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States /
by Phillip J. Wood

Chapter 2:  Privatized Problems: For-Profit Incarceration in Trouble /
by Christian Parenti

Chapter 3:  The Problem of Prison Privatization: The US Experience /
by Jeff Sinden

Chapter 4:  Juvenile Crime Pays – But at What Cost? /
by Alex Friedmann

Chapter 5:  Lack of Correctional Services /
by Judith Greene

Chapter 6:  Private Prisons and Health Care: The HMO From Hell /
by Elizabeth Alexander

Chapter 7:  International Law and the Privatization of Juvenile Justice /
by Mark Erik Hecht and Donna Habsha

Chapter 8:  Prison Privatization: The Arrested Development of African Americans /
by Monique W. Morris

Chapter 9:  Prison Privatization and Women /
by Katherine van Wormer

Chapter 10:  Incarceration of Native Americans and Private Prisons /
by Frank Smith

Chapter 11:  The Use of Privatized Detention Centers for Asylum Seekers in Australia and the UK
by Bente Molenaar and Rodney Neufeld

Chapter 12:  Worker Rights in Private Prisons /
by Joshua Miller

Chapter 13:  Get Tough Efficiency: Human Rights, Correctional Restructuring and Prison Privatization in Ontario, Canada /
by Dawn Moore, Kellie Leclerc Burton and Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Chapter 14:  Prison Privatization in the United Kingdom /
by Stephen Nathan

Chapter 15:  Prison Privatization Developments in South Africa /
by Julie Berg
   
Chapter 16:  Private Prisons:  Emerging and Transformative Economies /
by Stephen Nathan

Chapter 17:  Women Prisoners as Customers: Counting the Costs of the Privately Managed Metropolitan
Women’s Correctional Centre: Australia /
by Amanda George

Conclusion /
By Andrew Coyle

Bibliography

Index