[A-List] UK corporate state: prisons

[Keaney Michael]

Killer warns of risks in using private sector

VALERIE HANNAH
The Herald, 22 March 2002

      HUGH Collins, who served 16 years of a life
      sentence for murder, hit out yesterday at the plans
      by the Scottish Executive to open three private
      prisons.

      He also criticised moves to close Peterhead
      because he said it would spell the end of a
      successful sex offenders' programme and put
      women and children at risk.

      Collins, who now has a career as a writer after his
      sentence for the gangland murder of a rival, Willie
      Mooney, outside a Glasgow bar in 1977, said plans
      for the privately-run prisons would leave Scotland
      "with a nightmare on its hands in 10 years' time.

      "Privatised prisons are a good thing if you're a con
      because you can get anything you want through
      violence. But the question of rehabilitation goes
      right out of the window because the whole thing is
      geared towards profit making and the mass
      employment of prisoners."

      He added: "I have heard about Kilmarnock
      (Scotland's only private prison) and it is overrun
      with drugs and violence. There are stories of
      assaults every single day."

      Collins spent 26 of his 50 years in institutions and
      stabbed three prison officers during that time. He
      now lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Caroline.
      "Scottish people have always had a lot of good will
      towards the idea of rehabilitation, otherwise I
      wouldn't be sitting here," he said. "But I don't think
      private prisons are the way forward. Education and
      rehabilitation are what the prison service has got to
      look at."

      He backed proposals to reduce the size of
      Barlinnie. "You've got young boys in there who are
      on the road to ruin because it's just a university of
      crime." Collins was in Barlinnie's Special Unit,
      reserved for the most violent of Scotland's
      criminals.

Full article at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/22-3-19102-0-49-34.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney at mbs.fi