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Privatization of Prisons in Israel: Gains and Risks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Uri Timor
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Abstract

The Knesset recently authorized privatized prisons in Israel. The rationale is primarily economic, based on claims of savings as high as 25%. However various studies contradict each other with regard both to cutting costs and to the efficacy of privatization. Not all agree that quality of life, daily functioning, and the quality of educational and rehabilitative activities are better in privatized than public prisons. The Ministries of Finance and Internal Security decided on privatization for financial reasons without holding a meaningful public debate on the social, value-based and moral aspects. One such question is whether it is appropriate for the state to transfer coercive power over prisoners lacking autonomy to private parties motivated by economic interests who could possibly exploit their power to profit at the expense of the prisoners' living conditions, treatment, training and rehabilitation upon return to the community. The notion of justice will likely suffer when subordinated to private profit motives. The Privatization of Prisons Law in Israel partially discusses these problems by means of various clauses that restrict the possibility of harming prisoners rights and require care, education and rehabilitative activities, in addition to requiring strict supervision over activities in privatized prisons. However, in Israel, public supervision of privatized entities is inadequate. The rigor of the law is seldom invoked with private parties who violate laws or the terms of contracts they themselves have signed. Hence, the effectiveness of supervision is also somewhat suspect. The disadvantages of privatization render its merits questionable when compared with Israel's current public prisons system. Despite extreme overcrowding and substandard facilities in some Israeli prisons, these function reasonably well. There is relatively little violence, and prisoners enjoy care, education, and vocational training. We may conclude that it is preferable to improve facilities in public prisons, expanding them and strengthening their rehabilitative orientation. This can be done by partially privatizing the care, education and rehabilitation components as well as the services and maintenance, while leaving the security and administration in the hands of the Prison Service.

Type
Research Article
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 81 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2006

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Footnotes

*

Criminology Department, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.

References

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52 Despite the distinction between the judicial function of conviction and sentencing, which remains in the jurisdiction of the state, and the administration of the punishment by owners of private prisons, there are many intermediate situations in which the latter arrogate certain judicial powers to themselves, thus influencing the nature of the punishment. They do this, for example, when they impose punishments on the prisoners for violating prison discipline, or when they recommend that prisoners not be pardoned or not be transferred to a parole program. See Ira Robins, , Privatization and Corrections: Defining the Issues, 40(4) Vand. L. Rev. 813 (1987)Google Scholar; Shichor, supra note 6.

53 Shichor, supra note 37.

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74 There is an element of hypocrisy in this approach on the part of the directors of the private prisons in that, on the one hand, they claim that it is the government inspectors who are qualified to make a reliable professional determination as to whether they are upholding the terms of the contract, while on the other hand, in their criticism of the public prison, they present the government and its representatives as being ineffective and unable to administer prisons efficiently. Id.

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76 See, e.g., Peled, Yoav, Crime Pays: What Can Be Learned from the American Experience in Privatizing Prisons (2000)Google Scholar [in Hebrew]; Sitbon, Ofer, When Freedom Becomes Merchandise, Hevra 12 (2004)Google Scholar [in Hebrew].

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83 One of the indicators that an individual belongs to the weaker strata of society is a low level of education. Regarding this index, 22.6% of the prisoners have had no schooling whatsoever, (see The Prison Service, Annual Report (2002) [in Hebrew]) compared with the 4.2% unschooled among all Israeli citizens between the ages of 25 and 64. See The Central Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 1995 (1997) [in Hebrew].

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100 In 2003, less than ten cases of homosexual rape were reported in Israeli prisons. The same was true for each of the previous years, 1997-2002, id.

101 In 2003, there were ten escapes from Israeli prisons, a ratio of 1 escaped prisoner for every 1000 prisoners, id. The parallel ratio, for example, in the same year in New Zealand and Canada was five out of every 1000 prisoners, See The Department of Corrections, New Zealand Preventing Escapes (2003)Google Scholar.

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103 Spokesperson Prison Service (2005).

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109 See, e.g., Yerushalmi, M. & Bar-Yosef-Yerushalmi, Shira, Prison Privatization—Conflicting Interests Between Economic and Moral Dimensions, in In the Pursuit of Justice: Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Israel (Eden, L., Shadmi, E. & Kim, I. eds., 2004)Google Scholar [in Hebrew].