Holding Private Prisons To Account: What Role For Controllers As ‘The Eyes and Ears of the State’?

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-170
Author(s):  
Joanna Hargreaves ◽  
Amy Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Private Prisons

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP: CHARACTERISTICS AND DIFFERENCES FROM PUBLIC PROCUREMENТ

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larysa Lazebnyk ◽  
◽  
Yevhenii Nuriakhmetov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sewage Treatment ◽  
Public Private Partnership ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
Telecommunications Infrastructure

Рublic-private interactions have become commonplace in the economic life of many countries. Governments, state-owned enterprises and organizations use various forms and mechanisms to attract private capital to fulfill the main responsibilities of the state - the provision of socially important public services related to the development and maintenance of transport infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, parking lots), water supply, social housing, telecommunications infrastructure, sewage treatment plants, museums, schools, hospitals, and in some countries even private prisons. The state turns to such an instrument of contractual agreements with private partners as public- private partnership in order to bridge the gap between available resources and funds needed to finance projects in the above areas, diversify supply, ensure optimal value for money, allocate not only costs but and risks. Using the definition of public-private partnership, which is given by authoritative international organizations, contained in the Law of Ukraine "On Public- Private Partnership" and research, the article describes the key features of public-private partnership. These are the distribution of risks, the conflict of interests of partners, the problem of agency relations, longevity. The main attention is paid to identifying the specifics of PPP from the standpoint of differences from traditional procurement. This analysis distinguishes the requirements for these two types of contracts between public and private entities and identifies factors that may lead to wrong choices and thus discourages the desire to optimize value for money in the provision of socially necessary services. Awareness of the peculiarities of PPP will contribute to the success of its future implementation and practical implementation in Ukraine.

Holding private prisons to account: what role for Controllers as ‘the eyes and ears of the state’?

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-170
Author(s):  
Joanna Hargreaves ◽  
Amy Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Contract Management ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
Private Providers ◽  
Private Prison ◽  
Practical Nature

The advent of the private sector’s contemporary involvement in prisons in England and Wales saw the creation of a new role – that of the Controller. Controllers are embedded within all privately managed prisons as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the State. They hold the private sector to account on a day-to-day basis, ensuring that private providers deliver on their contractual promises and that the State’s delegated penal power is wielded in accordance with the law. While Controllers occupy an essential theoretical position within the prison accountability landscape, little is known about how Controllers understand and practice their roles and what this might mean for the nature and quality of accountability achieved. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with Controllers, this chapter explores the vision of accountability pursued by Controllers, their orientations to contract management, and the practical nature and impact of their accountability work. The chapter focuses on the form and significance of Controllers’ relationships with private prison Directors, especially exploring themes of trust and relationality.

Outsourcing Violence?

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alon Harel
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
Fundamental State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Governmental Functions ◽  
Private Entity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Private Individual

This Article develops a theory of “inherently governmental functions” and argues that these functions concern powers designed to execute or implement fundamental state decisions—e.g., the decision to criminalize certain behavior, the decision to inflict a certain sanction, or to the decision to initiate or end a war. While most theorists agree that fundamental state decisions of the types described above ought only to be made by the State, some believe that the power to execute or implement these decisions can be transferred to private entities. Thus, for instance, theorists maintain that while only the State can criminalize behavior, private prisons can execute the punishment; while only the State can declare a war, mercenaries can carry it out, etc. This Article disputes this claim. By transferring powers of “execution” or “implementation” of fundamental state decisions to private entities, the State severs the link between its fundamental societal decisions and the actions designed to execute or implement these decisions. Private entities that imprison people or soldiers hired to fight a war ought to be regarded not merely as executing or implementing public decisions. Instead, they ought to be regarded as private entities whose own private judgments concerning the justness of the sanctions they inflict or the justifiability of the wars they fight are prerequisite for the performance of their jobs. The contribution to the genesis of the action of the private entity made by the court’s decision to inflict a sanction or the State’s decision to go to war is, so to speak, superseded by the individual’s own judgment. The Article further argues that being punished by another private individual—rather than by the State—infringes upon one’s dignity as it subjects the will of one person to the will of another. The justifiability of the exertion of violence hinges upon the agent performing it. Hence, I maintain that it is impermissible on the part of the State to privatize the execution or implementation of some fundamental societal decisions.

WHY ONLY THE STATE MAY INFLICT CRIMINAL SANCTIONS: THE CASE AGAINST PRIVATELY INFLICTED SANCTIONS

Legal Theory ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alon Harel
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
Criminal Sanctions ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Private Individual

Criminal sanctions are typically inflicted by the state. The central role of the state in determining the severity of these sanctions and inflicting them requires justification. One justification for state-inflicted sanctions is simply that the state is more likely than other agents to determine accurately what a wrongdoer justly deserves and to inflict a just sanction on those who deserve it. Hence, in principle, the state could be replaced by other agents, for example, private individuals. This hypothesis has given rise to recent calls to reform the state's criminal justice system by introducing privately inflicted sanctions, for example, shaming penalties, private prisons, or private probationary services. This paper challenges this view and argues that the agency of the state is indispensable to criminal sanctions. Privately inflicted sanctions sever the link between the state's judgments concerning the wrongfulness of the action and the appropriateness of the sanction and the infliction of sufferings on the criminal. When a private individual inflicts punishment, she acts on what she and not the state judges to be a justified response to a criminal act. Privately inflicted sanctions for violations of criminal laws are not grounded in the judgments of the appropriate agent, namely the state. It is impermissible on the part of the state to approve, encourage, or initiate the infliction of a sanction (for violating a state-issued prohibition) on an alleged wrongdoer on the basis of a private judgment. Such an approval grants undue weight to the private judgment of the individual who inflicts the sanction.

scholarly journals IMPLEMENTATION OF STATE POLICY REGARDING PRISONS PRIVATIZATION: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES OF THE PRE-SENT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetiana Nikolaienko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Effective Interaction ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The State ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
National Space ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
Provision Of Services

. The article is devoted to the privatization of prisons and the provision of commercial services to improve the detention conditions of persons taken into custody in the pre-trial detention centers of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine. These issues have become relevant in modern conditions of experimental projects of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. The author of the article has used a comparative approach to define the effectiveness of the implemented projects and the efficiency of public policy in this area. The experience of countries, in which private prisons and the provision of services on a paying basis have proven their effectiveness and gained popularity in the world, has been studied. An analysis of the state policy implementation in this area in such countries as the United States, Norway, France has been accomplished. It showed that paid ser-vices related to the organization of executions, employment of prisoners, the possibility of obtaining certain funds, ensuring health care is carried out exclusively by organizations (corporations), which provide them. Peculiarities of their activity, legal aspects of standardization and possibilities of use in the national space have been investigated. An analysis of a experimental project introduced by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine to provide commercial services to persons taken into custody in pre-trial detention facilities of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine and a project to sell prisons has been carried out. It has been established that for the effectiveness of their implementation it is advisable to take into account the conditions in which the state is, its capabilities, current realities, including the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the probable risks. It has been proposed to consider the provision of commercial services to im-prove the conditions of persons taken into custody in pre-trial detention centers and the privatization of prisons as a multifaceted phenomenon in the context of the state policy of reforming (development) of the penitentiary service. It has been recom-mended to involve the private sector in the state penitentiary system, taking into ac-count the foreign experience, normalize the legal aspects of its activities, optimize the network of existing state-owned enterprises, penitentiary institutions, to ensure the efficiency of their functioning and to provide adequate detention conditions of accused persons (convicts) through effective interaction of the penitentiary service (state) with the private sector and active involvement of local authorities.

Practical Picture Processing

1974 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 338-339
Author(s):  
T. A. Welton
Keyword(s):  
Radiation Damage ◽  
Coherence Length ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Coherent Radiation ◽  
The State ◽  
Energy Spread ◽  
Electron Micrograph ◽  
Picture Processing ◽  
Molecular Skeleton

Various authors have emphasized the spatial information resident in an electron micrograph taken with adequately coherent radiation. In view of the completion of at least one such instrument, this opportunity is taken to summarize the state of the art of processing such micrographs. We use the usual symbols for the aberration coefficients, and supplement these with £ and 6 for the transverse coherence length and the fractional energy spread respectively. He also assume a weak, biologically interesting sample, with principal interest lying in the molecular skeleton remaining after obvious hydrogen loss and other radiation damage has occurred.

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