It’s time to get Serco out of NZ’s prison system once and for all.
Help us say bon voyage to Serco
When horrifying images of fight clubs and violence came out of Mt Eden Prison last year, we were horrified.
We learned about Serco, a private company with a litany of human rights abuses, getting rich from from shoddily running New Zealand prisons.
4619 ActionStation members took action and together, we helped convince the Government to cancel Serco’s contract at Mt Eden.
But despite the massive scandal, Serco still operates a prison in New Zealand.
It’s the only for-profit prison we have, and it’s one of our worst.
The profit-driven prison experiment hasn’t worked. Huge foreign corporations are getting rich from locking up New Zealanders, and they’re doing a terrible job of it.
Here’s the thing. Privately owned, profit-driven prisons are not only expensive and inefficient, they’re leaving us all worse off.
They are designed primarily to make money. They bring a cold, lock-them-up-for-as-cheap-as-possible mentality with no mind for rehabilitating inmates.
When profit-driven companies like Serco look to scrimp on every dollar possible, staff and training are often the first thing to go. What we’re left with is understaffed prisons with under-qualified staff. It’s exactly the type of scenario that lead to the horrendous scenes we saw out of their Mt Eden Prison.
Simply put, rehabilitating offenders is Serco’s last priority. Instead, we get fight clubs, mistreated staff and profits shipped offshore.
It’s in all of our interests to have a better prison system. It means offenders leave prison less likely to re-offend, the Government saving money by not incarcerating people who have been rehabilitated, and reducing our overall crime rate.
After we spoke up against the Mt Eden fight clubs the Government listened and ended Serco’s contract. They’ve done it before.
It’s time Corrections learns its lessons and puts a stop to profit-driven prisons in New Zealand once and for all.
