prisons

An overview of state-operated correctional facilities in Australia is provided here as part of background information about the Australian legal system.

As of 2004 there were seven private prisons in Australia (two each in Victoria and Queensland; one each in NSW, South Australia and Western Australia). Australia had the highest proportion of inmates in private prisons of any nation (at around 17%). In the UK at that time there were 11 private prisons, with 100 private prisons in the United States.

     studies

Points of entry to the literature about private prison operation and prison privatisation in Australia include -

• Paul Moyle - Profiting from Punishment: Private Prisons in Australia : Reform or Regression (Annandale: Pluto Press 2000)
• Richard Harding - Private prisons in Australia (Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice No. 36) (Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology 1992) (PDF)
• Richard Harding - Private prisons in Australia: the second phase (Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice No. 84) (Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology 1998) (PDF)
• Private Prisons & Public Accountability: Australia & Abroad (Sydney: Institute of Criminology 1998)
• Lenny Roth - Privatisation of Prisons (NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service Briefing Paper No. 03/2004) (2004) (PDF)

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