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Emerald Corrections, Be'er Sheva
March 24, 2010 YNET News
Plans to establish the first private prison in Israel, which was thwarted
by the Supreme Court, will cost Israel's economy some NIS 220 million ($ 58
million). Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch
on Wednesday announced during the Israel Prison Service (Shabas)
annual conference that the jail will be annexed to the Israel Prison Service.
According to estimates, the Finance Ministry will deliver the needed funds
for the purchase in the upcoming weeks. Aharonovitch
said that his ministry and the Finance Ministry were working on transferring
the private prison to the hands of the Israel Prison Service. "In light
of the Supreme Court's decision, all efforts are being made to hand over the
facility's operations to the Israel Prison Service. The facility will serve
as a modern and suitable addition to the organization. "I can declare
that the Finance Ministry has concluded its work with us and the annexation
will be made in the upcoming weeks," the minister said.
November
20, 2009 Haaretz
"I cannot say that it was unexpected, but when it really happens, it
seems unexpected," said the owner of Minrav
Engineering and Construction, Abraham Kuznitsky,
minutes after being informed yesterday of the High Court of Justice's
decision against his operating a privately-run prison near Be'er Sheva. Minrav and Africa Israel were the co-winners of the state
tender to operate Israel's first private prison. Kuznitsky
has spent the last four years on the project and is considered the driving
force behind it. After the project's cancellation, the state is expected to
open negotiations with the franchisee over compensation. The franchise
agreement requires the state to pay such compensation to the tender winners
for their expenses so far in building the prison, which cost about NIS 220
million. But the question of compensation for future earnings and payment for
other expenses may very well reach arbitration, and even the courts. "At
least financially, our situation now is better than if the decision had not
been made," said Kuznitsky. But he did not
leave any room for doubt as to his intentions: "We will demand the NIS
200 million we have invested, and we will present the state with a demand for
at least another NIS 150 million," he said. Kuznitsky
said the state will have to compensate them for all the damages in the eight
months since they finished building the project, including not only for
expenses for training staff, but also all for future income from the
operation. He said the companies had trained 120 employees and that is a
tragedy since they gave up other work - and now will be unable to find new
jobs - and they could even sue him. The court's decision came after
construction was completed, but it did not allow the prison to be used until
before it made its ruling. The tender for Israel's first privately-run prison
was a Build-Operate-Transfer contract. The franchisee builds, runs and
maintains the facility for a set period of time in return for regular
payments, and at the end of the operating period the facility is handed over
to the state. The NIS 1.5 billion tender required building a prison in 32
months to house 800 prisoners. The bidders competed over the price the state
would pay for every prisoner, with Minrav and
Africa Israel winning with the lowest price of NIS 218.90 per prisoner per
day. The tender process started at the beginning of 2003 and the winners were
chosen at the end of 2005. Both the treasury and Africa Israel said yesterday
they were still studying the decision. Sources at Africa Israel said they did
not expect the company to suffer financial damage from the ruling as the
state is required to compensate the firm.
November
19, 2009 YNET
The Supreme Court annulled an amendment to the Prison Ordinance which
allows for the establishment of a private prison that will be run by a
private corporation. In her ruling, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish said the transfer
of control over Israel's prisons from the State to private hands would
constitute a severe violation of prisoners' basic human rights. The chief
justice noted that while the amendment was aimed at improving detainment
conditions in Israeli prisons, its main aim is an economic desire to save
State funds. Beinish added that while the High
Court usually does not interfere in economic policies formulated by the
government and Knesset, it takes a different approach in respect to
legislation that undermines the most fundamental constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, Justice Edmund Levy, who remained in the minority opinion, wrote
that he felt it was too early to determine that the proposed amendment is
unconstitutional, as it has not been implemented yet.
June
3, 2009 Israel National News
State attorneys have filed a request with the Supreme Court asking to
hasten the decision-making process regarding private prisons. The issue of
whether or not the government can allow private companies to run prisons was
brought to the court four years ago, and the last hearing on the subject was
held almost two years ago. Attorneys said that the court's delay in handing
down a verdict had caused financial losses to both the state and a private
company hoping to run a prison. The company has already built a prison
compound, which attorneys said costs millions of shekels a year to maintain
in its current, empty state.
May
18, 2009 Israel National News
Not only will a privately-run prison not save the government 15 percent
of a jail’s operating expenses, as originally thought, but it will actually
cost 20 percent more, according to an Israeli Prison Service internal report.
The private prison was supposed to have opened in Be’er
Sheva this past month but was stopped in its tracks
by a Supreme Court ruling. The Court ruled on a petition submitted four years
ago by a prisoner named Yadin Machnes,
a lawyer by profession, as well as the heads of the Civil Rights Department
in the Law Academic College of Ramat Gan and former
Israel Prison Service official Shlomo Tauser. The petitioners claimed that Israeli legal
principles and Basic Laws forbid the transfer to a private, commercial body
of sovereign powers such as the use of force to incarcerate individuals.
Privatization of jails could “lead to the privatization of the police, army
and legal system,” the petitioner maintained, “causing a mortal blow to
democratic life in Israel.” The already-built facility, just south of Be’er Sheva, is designed to
hold 800 low-to-medium security prisoners serving up to seven years in jail.
It is owned by ALA Management and Operations, which won the government tender
to run Israel’s first private jail. ALA is a subsidiary of three companies:
Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel, the Minerb
construction company of Israel, and Emerald Corrections, a Louisiana-based
company that operates several private detention centers in Texas. MKs Give
Report to Police Minister -- The new Prison Service report was revealed by MK
Shelly Yechimovich (Labor) and former Prison
Service head Aryeh Bibi (Kadima). They asked Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovich to accept the report, and are also working to
have it presented to the Supreme Court – even though the petition is not
related to the economics of running the prison. Representatives of the
private-prison companies say they will demand at least 250 million shekels in
compensation for their losses. They have already built the facility, bought
equipment, and hired workers. The Supreme Court has already hinted that the
operators do not deserve the full sum, as they were aware as early as three
years ago, when a first restraining order was served, that the legality of the
private jail’s operation was in doubt. Arguments against Privatization --
Arguments against privatization include the fact that restricting
individuals’ freedom should be done only by the State and the fact that
giving jail-control to private owners leads them to lobby for tougher crime
laws that will lead to more prisoners, as has occurred in the United States.
On the other hand, a Prison Service representative is to be present at all
times, and any violations of the detailed contract - which stipulate in
detail how prisoners are to be treated - are liable to lead to fines for the
operators.
March
22, 2009 Israel National News
A special nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, has issued a
restraining order preventing Israel’s first private prison from beginning
operation. The ruling has profound legal, social and philosophical
ramifications. Legal petitions against the privatization of Israel’s prisons
were submitted four years ago by a prisoner named Yadin
Machnes, a lawyer by profession, as well as the
heads of the Civil Rights Department in the Law Academic College of Ramat Gan and former Israel Prison Service official Shlomo Tauser. The
already-built facility, just south of Be’er Sheva, was to open its doors as early as next month,
holding 800 low-to-medium security prisoners serving up to seven years in
jail. It is owned by ALA Management and Operations, which won the government
tender to run Israel’s first private jail. ALA is a subsidiary of three
companies: Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel, an Israeli
construction company, and Emerald Corrections, a Louisiana-based company that
operates several private detention centers in Texas. Petitioners:
Privatization of Police and Army Next? -- The petitioners claimed that Israeli
legal principles and Basic Laws forbid the transfer to a private, commercial
body of sovereign powers such as the use of force to incarcerate individuals.
Privatization of jails could “lead to the privatization of the police, army
and legal system,” the petitioner maintained, “causing a mortal blow to
democratic life in Israel.” The State – backed specifically by the Finance
and Public Security Ministries – claimed that the new prison would be a
“unique, responsible and supervised model,” and that prisoners’ rights would
be at the top of its agenda. A major objective of the State is to save money
in prison management, though whether it would actually do so, especially in
the long run, is now up for debate. The Supreme Court judges noted that the
fact that the new jail has already been built is the company’s problem. They
noted that they had issued a previous restraining order in June 2006, well
before the facility was completed, making it clear to all that the legality
of the private jail’s operation was in doubt. Arguments Against Privatization
-- Attorney Aviv Wasserman of Ramat Gan, one of the
petitioners, has summed up several of the arguments against private prisons.
They include the following: Enforcing the denial of an individual’s freedom
of mobility should be done not by a private, commercial body, but only by the
State. The most common way for a private body to save money in running a
prison is to cut back on guards’ salaries. This is not only unfair to the
guards, but also leads to heavy turnover in manpower, a drop in quality of
training and functioning, and a corresponding rise in incidents of violence
and smuggling in comparison with public jails. Other methods of saving money
also come at the expense of the prisoner, including reductions in rehabilitation,
education, prisoner welfare, and the like. In addition, money for work
performed by the prisoners goes mostly to the private company, as opposed to
the situation in public jails, where the profits are directed to funds used
for the prisoners’ welfare. Transferring control of jails to private owners
leads the latter to lobby for more prisoners. This partially explains the
dramatic rise in prisoners in the United States - nearly ten-fold - over the
past 25 years. Lobbyists push for the Three Strikes You’re Out policy
(meaning that one who is convicted of three felonies receives an automatic
25-year sentence), as well as for the abolition of Youth Courts.
March
4, 2008 Haaretz
The cost of incarceration at the private jail nearing completion in Be'er Sheva will be at least
30% more than in a government facility. The figures are in clear
contradiction of the Finance Ministry's position, which stated that operating
a private jail would save the government 20% in the cost of prisoner
maintenance. The report is according to figures calculated recently by a
senior Israel Prison Services official. ALA Management and Operations, a
subsidiary of Lev Leviev's Africa Israel, won the
government tender to run Israel's first private prison, which is due to open
in the coming year beside the existing Be'er Sheva prison. The new prison is still awaiting a ruling
from the High Court of Justice. The main argument in the petition is that
transferring a prison to a private enterprise infringes on the sovereignty of
the state. The state is supposed to have a monopoly on the use of force and
punishment, and the petition alleges that a private facility contravenes the
Basic Law on Government. The petitioners further claim that privatization
could lead to a violation of a prisoner's rights, thus contravening the Basic
Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. The tender states that the treasury will
pay ALA 220 shekels per day per inmate. But the calculation by the IPS
official indicates that, among other things, the per diem cost of the
salaries of the 18 wardens provided by IPS will increase inmate maintenance
costs by NIS 15 a day. This expense was not taken into account when the
tender was signed. It also turns out that the cost of keeping prisoners in an
IPS facility has declined since the original tender calculation was made, and
now stands at NIS 155 per day - NIS 80 less than the daily cost at the
private jail. "The treasury's calculation was not based on a budgetary
figure," responded a source at the Finance Ministry, "but was rather
made from the tender winner's perspective. Without agreeing to the analysis
presented here, it should be noted that the goal is not to save money, but
rather to improve conditions for the prison inmates." The state refused
to disclose the calculation used in the drafting of the tender, citing
commercial confidentiality.
January
1, 2008 Globes
Most of the Israeli public supports the privatization of government companies
and public services, including Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), the Israel
Airports Authority and the seaports, according to a survey by Maagar Mochot. However, the
public rejects the privatization of the Prisons Service, water and sewage
infrastructures, and the education and health services. The survey was
conducted ahead of today's debate sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute
on private prisons. The survey found a clear correlation between people's
level of income and support for privatization. 70% of high income-earners
support privatization of IEC the Airports Authority, and the seaports,
compared with 46-47% of persons earning less than the average national
salary.
July
7, 2007 Haaretz
The Knesset will ask the High Court of Justice today to postpone by a
year its deliberations on a petition that seeks to annul a law allowing
private companies to operate prisons in Israel. The Knesset will seek to
convince a panel of nine justices that it intends to hold a public discussion
on the overall implications - economic, social and administrative - of the
general processes of privatization in the country. A petition was filed by
the Ramat Gan Law School, which argued that the
license given to the billionaire Lev Leviev to
build and operate a private prison contravenes the Basic Law on Government.
The petitioners say the licensing gives a private firm
clear powers of governance, including the use of force and the denial
of liberty. Leviev's prison is being constructed
near Be'er Sheva and is
expected to receive inmates in June 2009. A year ago the Knesset asked to
participate as a respondent to the petition, and asked to postpone the
deliberations - which were scheduled to take place in late August 2006. The
justices accepted the Knesset's argument that two bills against privatizing
prisons, by MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) and Dov Hanin (Hadash),
were pending and it was necessary to allow the legislators to deliberate and
then vote. In late February, the state and the Knesset asked the court for
yet another delay, arguing that although the two bills were rejected in
votes, another bill was still pending. The situation was complicated by the
fact that MK Nadia Hilu and MK Michael Melchior,
who had propsed the bill, withdrew after the two
previous bills were voted down. In mid-March, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik called on the general public to present the Knesset
with position papers on the implications of privatizing prisons, which would
be discussed during the summer session. But the explanation filed by the
Knesset legal counselor, Nurit Elstein,
to the High Court last week said that a discussion of dozens of position
papers sent to the Knesset has not been possible due to the legislature's
busy agenda in recent months. Elstein said the
Knesset plans to hold a series of discussions during its winter session that
are expected to be concluded by March 2008. "The Knesset request is not
an innocent one," says attorney Gilad Barnea, representing the petitioners. "Its purpose
is to bring the court in direct confrontation with the Knesset over the right
to legislate laws." Yachimovich added:
"Each day that goes by bolsters Lev Leviev's
hold on the prison he owns and creates an irreversible situation in which the
power to jail, punish, supervise and rehabilitate are in the hands of
tycoons."
August
31, 2006 Globes
The High Court of Justice today postponed a hearing on a petition filed by
the Academic College of Law, Ramat Gan against the
government and Knesset to void a law amending the prison ordinance to allow
the establishment of a privately-run prison. A seven-judge panel headed by
Supreme Court President Judge Aharon Barak ruled
that in six months the government and Knesset will file supplementary
statements for the petition. The High Court of Justice said its decision has
no bearing on the content of the petition, “which raises serious legal problems.”
The decision was given following a discussion on whether there was room, as
the state and Knesset argue, for allowing public debate to be completed, and
for the Knesset to discuss the issue, before the High Court of Justice
hearing and ruling on the case.
July
16, 2006 Globes
A panel of nine High Court of Justice judges has rejected a petition by
the Academic College of Law, Ramat Gan and former
Israel Prisons Commissioner Shlomo Twiser for an injunction against the minister of finance
and public security to continue procedures for the construction of a private
prison near Beersheva by ALA Management and
Operations Ltd. The High Court of Justice ruled that there were no grounds
for an injunction, and that a decision on the petition would be given before
the procedures for building the prison were completed, and before sovereign
authority was transferred to a private entity. The court therefore ruled that
no harm would be caused to the petitioners during the interim.
June
18, 2006 Jerusalem Post
An extended panel of seven High Court justices is due on Sunday to hear a
petition by the Ramat Gan Academic College for Law
against legislation passed two years ago allowing for the construction and
operation of a privately owned prison. Since the law was passed, the Prison
Service awarded the franchise for the first such prison to businessman Lev Levayev. Levayev signed a
25-year contract with the state to build and run a prison to house 800
inmates. The petition, filed by attorneys Gilad Barnea and Aviv Wasserman, head of the human rights
division of Ramat Gan College, charged that the law
violated Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law: Government according to which
"the government is the executive authority of the State." According
to their argument, while the government may delegate some of its executive
responsibilities to private agents, there are certain "core"
responsibilities which it must execute itself. Otherwise, it loses its
sovereign power. These responsibilities include enforcement of the law,
including the incarceration of lawbreakers. "Not only is
corrections one of the government's most basic responsibilities, it is
probably the most sobering," they wrote, quoting from an article written
by Prof. Joseph Field. "The ability to deprive citizens of their freedom,
force them to live behind bars and totally regulate their lives is unlike any
other power the government has. The responsibility for corrections goes
beyond issues of cost efficiency and touches on whether a private company
should be able to regulate the affairs of a citizen deprived of his
freedom." The petitioners pointed out that the law granted the head of
the privately owned prison widespread powers, including handcuffing prisoners
in public places, holding prisoners in isolation, search and confiscation,
prohibiting a prisoner from seeing his lawyer, control over the prisoner's
incoming and outgoing mail, disciplinary hearings, and the right to use
firearms when necessary. In its response, the state rejected the petitioners'
allegation that the law released the state from its responsibility and
maintained that it also gave it far-reaching supervisory powers. These powers
included the obligation to appoint a team of Prison Service officials which
was to be physically present in the prison 24 hours a day to oversee that the
owners fulfilled their duties. The state also rejected the constitutional
argument raised by the petitioners to the effect that the law prevented the
government from fulfilling its constitutional responsibility as the executive
authority of the state. It argued that according to Paragraph 33 (e) of the
Basic Law: Government, the government could delegate powers if a law
specifically said it could. The intellectual monthly, Eretz
Aheret, devoted its latest issue to the controversy
over the establishment of a private prison in the hopes of fanning a public
discussion which, it alleged, had been almost totally lacking over an issue
it described as crucial. "This edition deals with a range of
journalistic and philosophical questions regarding the legislation to
establish a private prison," wrote the editor, Bambi Sheleg.
"Who pushed the project and why; why was such an important law passed in
only three months from the day it was brought before the Knesset Interior
Committee; why weren't the committee's deliberations covered by the media;
why did many MKs vote for a law without understanding its implications; why
did the state refuse to publish the terms of the public tender... "On
June 18, the High Court... will determine a fateful question. Has the state
crossed permissible boundaries in passing a law allowing a private prison?
Did the Knesset not exceed its powers and cause irreversible damage to
Israeli sovereignty?"
June
18, 2006 Globes
The High Court of Justice today issued a show cause order instructing the
state to justify the legality of a private jail within 30 days. The High
Court of Justice issued the order following a petition to the court to void a
law allowing the construction of Israel’s first private jail near Beersheva. A nine-judge panel will hear the case shortly
after the government files its response to the show cause order. The
respondents in the petition are the ministers of justice and finance. The
High Court of Justice also ordered the parties to file their comments on the
petitioners’ request for an injunction to halt further action on the tender
for the private jail. The state must submit its response within seven days,
and the petitioners will then have seven days to respond. The High Court of
Justice will probably rule on whether to allow the tender to go forward
within two weeks. The High Court of Justice also ordered a review of whether
to bring in the Knesset to the discussion, and whether to add the winner in
the prison tender as another respondent to the petition. ALA Management and
Operations Ltd., a joint subsidiary of Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. (TASE:AFIL; Pink Sheets:AFIVY) and Minrav Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MNRV) subsidiary Minrav Engineering & Construction (1983) Ltd. won the
tender to build and operate the private jail. Under the tender, the jail will
become operational in three years. The company must allocate 5.2 sq.m. per
convict, and the state will pay the company $49 per convict per day. Academic
College of Law, Ramat Gan and former Israel Prisons
Commissioner Shlomo Twiser
filed the petition. They claim that privatizing prisons transfers the state’s
sovereign authority to a private entity, operating out of the profit motive,
which is liable to harm the convicts’ rights. The petitioners’ fundamental
claim is that the law permitting the privatization of prisons contravenes the
Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty; and Basic Law: The Government, which
bans the transfer of sovereign authority (law enforcement) to a private
entity.
April
30, 2006 Globes
Construction of Israel’s first privately operated prison is expected to
overcome its final obstacle is a few days. Africa-Israel Investments Ltd.
(TASE:AFIL; Pink Sheets:AFIVY) and Minrav Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MNRV), which won the tender
for the prison in November 2005, will have to wait until the High Court of
Justice hears an appeal against the prison filed by Ramat Gan
College Human Rights Department. If the High Court of Justice approves the
private prison, Africa-Israel chairman Lev Leviev
and Minrav chairman Avraham
Kuznitzky will become the first individuals in
Israel to operate a private prison in the country. Under the terms of the
tender, Africa-Israel and Minrav will build the
prison and operate it for 25 years, under the PFI (private finance
initiative) method. The state will pay the two companies for each prisoner
during the franchise period. The contract will be worth at least NIS 1.5
billion, while the cost of building the prison is estimated at NIS 250
million. Africa-Israel and Minrav are expected to
make an annual return on investment of 6-10%. Construction of the prison is
scheduled to begin early this year, and end within three years. Located south
of Beersheva, the prison will house 800-1,000 low
and medium-security prisoners. Since this is the first tender of its kind in
Israel, implementation will be monitored, and, if successful, the government
might privatize another prison in northern Israel. The Ramat Gan College Human Rights Department argues that
privatizing prisons grants the franchisee clear governing authority,
including the use of force, including lethal force; restricting freedom,
including the use of solitary confinement; and restricting the privacy of
both prisoners and visitors. These authorities are the nucleus of the modern
state’s sovereignty and authority, and conceding them contravenes Israel’s
Basic Laws, which ban the transfer of prisoners from the state’s authority to
a private entity driven by the profit motive. The petitioners add that
privatizing prisons constitutes a fundamental breach in the legal barriers
that prevent harm to a democratic state’s sovereignty, a process that will
begin with the privatizing of prisons, but end with the privatizing of the
police, judiciary, and armed forces, thereby dealing a death blow to Israel’s
constitutional structure. The State Prosecutor’s Office argues that the
privatization of a prison is a statutory privatization that does not harm
fundamental constitutional rights.
March
1, 2006 Haaretz
The concept of transferring the establishment and management of prisons to a
private entrepreneur has arrived in Israel too. There is a bill on this
issue, and a first corporation, owned by real estate mogul Lev Leviev and others, is already making an offer to the
government to build a prison and run it for 25 years - a deal worth NIS 1.5
billion. The Finance Ministry, which is fanatically insistent on privatizing
everything that moves, is supportive, and the initiative is making strides in
the Internal Security Ministry as well. The employees of the Israel Prison
Service that will be harmed by the privatization are the low-level workers -
who constitute the majority of the employees - as those who win the
concession will prefer cheap and temporary workers. But the ones who will
express the prison service's position in talks dealing with the questions of
whether, how much, and how to privatize will not be the low-level workers,
but the senior leadership. These are the same people who expect to be
integrated into the new owners' business in fat administrative and consulting
positions, free of government salary ceilings, or else are planning to bid on
future tenders with their own companies. The first signs are already in the
air: Orit Adato, the former prison service
commissioner, has been recruited as a professional consultant to Leviev's incarceration corporation. Within the prison
service, quite a few senior officials support privatization, led by the head
of the prison service headquarters. However, privatizing imprisonment raises
issues that are still more fundamental than the conflict-of-interest problems
of senior prison service officials meddling in the privatization or the
unstable future of the low-level workers. Some of these fundamental issues
appear in two petitions that have been filed with the High Court of Justice
recently against the privatization of incarceration. One of the petitions was
filed by the human rights department of the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan, and the second by Physicians for Human Rights. The
basic question the petitions raise is what the "core powers" of the
state are, which fundamentally cannot be transferred to subcontractors. There
is universal agreement about the existence of such powers. The problem is
that no nation has precisely defined what those powers include - that is,
what the limits of privatization are. And in every country in which the
subject of core powers has come up for fundamental judicial debate - of the
kind that is to be conducted shortly in the High Court - the judges have preferred
not to make a decision on the matter and to wait for the legislators.
Privatization is a process in which the state, which holds assets, resources
and powers as a trustee of the citizens, sells them into private hands. In
cases such as private education or private medicine, those who want to pay
money for them do so if they can afford it, and quality control is by means
of demand: When the service fails, the client votes with his feet, goes back
to using the government service or chooses another provider. Prisons,
however, are run differently. The prisoners are literally a captive clientele
that might get the service, but doesn't want it and certainly doesn't
purchase or fund it. The true client is the public at large, and the service
it is requesting is not the provision of shelter, food and clothing for
criminals, but the distancing of dangerous elements, punishment, education
and rehabilitation. In contrast to other arenas of privatization, the chain
reaction of the clients when it comes to incarceration - that is, the public
- will be tangled, fragmented and weakened. Who exactly will respond if it
becomes clear that the prisons are being run badly, that there is corruption,
that the prisoners have a low level of personal safety, or that the ability
to keep them behind bars is hampered by a constant attempt to minimize costs
(such as by cutting down on the number of wardens) and increase profit? When
the entity financing a service and the entity consuming it are different, who
will the professionals - such as those in the Internal Security Ministry,
which is to supervise the entrepreneurs - represent? These questions become
sharper still in light of the tremendous range of new potential ties between
money and power that are being offered by the privatization of incarceration.
Israeli law-enforcement officials have shown in the last few years that they
are increasingly ready to follow in the footsteps of countries, such as
Denmark, that have cut down on imprisonment in cases such as financial
crimes, replacing it with deterrent fines and other punitive methods that
have been shown to be effective. How will a real estate mogul who runs
prisons use his connections with lawmakers when the Knesset debates bills
geared toward cutting down on the number of prisoners, a la Denmark, or other
bills dealing with shortening or lengthening prison terms? It may be that in
the absence of explicit legislation, the High Court justices will choose to
refrain from defining the state's core powers and the limits of privatization.
But even without being required to give such a binding definition, the High
Court is likely to contribute by determining that it is appropriate and
reasonable always to include corporeal restraints, primarily detention and
imprisonment, within the state's core powers. Such a ruling, and the implied
order that it is appropriate only for civil servants to be responsible for
all powers of corporeal restraint, will take the privatization of prisons off
the agenda, thereby granting suitable protection of the public interest, the
rights of the Israel Prison Service workers and the human dignity of the
prisoners.
November
28, 2005 Haaretz.com
Ostensibly, the idea behind the process of privatization, in which it was
recently decided that a group of companies headed by tycoon Lev Leviev will build and operate a private prison, is no
different from the idea behind the processes that during the past decade have
led to privatization in the Employment Service, the seaports and the national
airline. But this is different. The sovereignty of the state, as experts on
political science and political philosophy say, is expressed in its monopoly
on applying means of force on everyone who is within its boundaries. The
army, the police, the State Prosecutor's Office, the courts and the prisons
are tools by means of which the state exercises its authority and implements
its sovereignty. Thus the state of Israel has decided to delegate some of its
authority to Leviev in building a prison near Be'er Sheva. This happened in a
process that went on for about five years and provoked public debate. The
idea was imported from abroad by Finance Ministry officials during Ehud
Barak's tenure as prime minister and was frozen because of the opposition of
then-public security minister Shlomo Ben-Ami,
revived when (now Likud MK) Uzi Landau replaced him and gained momentum in
2003 when (now Likud MK) Benjamin Netanyahu, who was appointed finance
minister at that time, started to promote it very energetically. About two
weeks ago an inter-ministerial tenders committee consisting of
representatives of the Finance Ministry, the Public Security Ministry and the
Prison Service chose the bidder who will build and operate, for 22 years, a
prison for 800 inmates. In the winning company, which will receive a state
grant of NIS 47 million to build a prison with an investment of NIS 250
million, the controlling share is in the hands of Lev Leviev,
and the partners in it will be the Israeli Minrav
Engineering Company and the American Emerald Company, which operates small
private prisons in the United States. When the prison begins to operate, the
State of Israel will pay the company for every prisoner incarcerated. The
overall extent of the contract is estimated at about NIS 1.4 billion. When
the idea was first brought up, at the Prisons Service they argued that it was
incumbent upon the state to solve the prison space shortage by building
additional public prisons. Only during the past three years, after Lieutenant
General Prison Commissioner Yaakov Ganot replaced
Orit Adato - and realized how determined the
Finance Ministry was to advance the project - did the service decide to
support the privatization and even made itself a leading force in its
implementation. Prisons Service Commander Haim
Glick, headquarters chief of the Prison Service and the person who is
considered one of the leading candidates to replace Ganot
in about a year, is more identified than anyone else now with the idea of
establishing the private prison. Glick, who is both an economist and a
lawyer, played a key role in preparing the tender, in establishing the
professional requirements that are included in it and also in the selection
of the winning bidder. Prisons Service Commissioner (ret.) Adato, upon her retirement from the service, founded Adato Consulting, Ltd., which is providing professional
advice to the prison managements, both public and private, internationally. Adato is also the professional consultant to the group
that won the franchise to operate the prison in Israel. More prisoners than
China During the 12 years that have elapsed since the establishment of the
world's first private prison in the United States, a great deal of experience
has accumulated, which mostly is not encouraging. About 30 countries have
thus far established approximately 200 private prisons, in which more than
150,000 inmates are incarcerated. Most of the private prisons have been
established in the United States, France, Britain and Australia, and a few of
them in South American states and in Eastern Europe; and there is also one
country - New Zealand - that has reversed its decision to privatize prisons.
In the U.S., however, private prisons have become a huge industry: About 14
percent of all federal prisoners and about 6 percent of the state prisoners
are held in private prisons. The prison industry is already in second place,
right after the high-tech industry, in the ranking of growth: The four
leading companies, whose profits came to no less than $2.3 billion dollars in
2004, are growing at the rate of 5.9 percent annually. As they grow stronger,
so too does their public influence and thus their lobbying efforts with the
aim of making criminal legislation and punishment policy more stringent. No
wonder then that the number of prisoners in the United States, which a few
years before the establishment of the first private prison stood at 280,000,
has burgeoned since then to 2.13 million today. This monstrous number is
higher than the number of prisoners in China, where the population is four
times greater than that of the United States. "Private prisons are not
the only reason for this increase, but there is no doubt that their lobbying
activity is one of the reasons for the increasing stringency of punishment
and the increase in the number of prisoners," says attorney Aviv
Wasserman, the head of the human rights division at the Academic College of
Law in Ramat Gan, whose petition to the High Court
of Justice against the decision to establish a private prison here is still
pending. Wasserman believes that here, too, we will see such lobbying
campaigns in the future. "Even now there is talk about the need for
toughness, but today they are discussing this with the participation of the
Justice Ministry, the Israel Bar Association, academia and the human rights
organizations," he says. "From now on there will also be
participation in these discussions, for example in the Knesset House
Committee, of Lev Leviev's representatives, who
will want to increase the number of prisoners. This is a new player who has
interests that are worth billions of shekels and will come with the best
lawyers and public relations people. His weight could prove crucial." A
request to interview Leviev has been unanswered but
Ronny Rahav, the public relations person for Leviev's Africa-Israel Investments, has sent the
following response in writing: "Africa-Israel's vision is to reach a
situation in which the work of rehabilitating prisoners will rehabilitate
them for the long term, so that they will not return to prison again. We do
not see any need to intervene in legislative processes. We trust the state
and its laws." There are three models for prison privatization. In the
partial privatization model, the entrepreneur builds the prison and provides
most of the services there (from equipment and food to medicine,
rehabilitation and employment) but leaves its professional management in the
hands of the state; the prison guards and officers are subordinate to the
state and are employed by it rather than by the entrepreneur. In the full privatization
model,in effect mostly in
the United States, the entrepreneur is also responsible for the prison's
operational management and is even authorized to try and punish the prisoners
for disciplinary infractions. All of the members of the staff, including
those who are authorized to try the prisoner and extend his term of
imprisonment, are employed by the entrepreneur. Israel has decided to adopt a
third model, which is implemented mainly in Britain: The entrepreneur manages
the prison, as in the American model, but the authority to try and punish
prisoners remains in the hands of the Prisons Service. Reducing expenditures
"This model should not have been adopted," says Dr. Uri Timor, a
lecturer in the criminology department of Bar-Ilan
University, who inspects conditions in the Prisons Service facilities on
behalf of the Israeli Council for Criminology, an organization of academics.
Timor believes that the franchisee must not be allowed to employ the prison
guards because studies done in the private prisons elsewhere have shown that
the entrepreneurs tend to increase their profits by means of hiring untrained
personnel, at low wages and without social benefits. Another way of
decreasing expenditures entails cutting to the minimum the period of training
for the prison guards. The terrible employment conditions, explains Timor,
leads to a high turnover of prison employees and the lack of training results
in unprofessional work. The combination of the two phenomena turns the
private prisons into facilities with a high rate of violent incidents, in
which the prisoners' rights are violated daily. Timor believes that this will
happen in Be'er Sheva as
well. "The cost of the wages of a prison guard in the Prisons Service,
including benefits and pension, comes to NIS 20,000 a month," he
explains. "For a private company whose main interest is profit this is a
very large sum of money. What will they do? They will take students, train
them for a day or two and pay them the minimum wage without social benefits.
This has to have a bad effect on their work. And this is a pity, because in
the Prisons Service there is very professional and skilled manpower. In the
Prisons Service prisons perhaps the walls are crumbling but the management is
quiet and serious, with very little violence." "A prison guard is
not a shopping mall security guard, and we have no intention of hiring prison
guards the way security guards are employed at a mall," responds Orit Adato. The contract that has been signed between the
state and the franchisee that she is advising does not stipulate the wages or
the method of employment at the prison, but Adato
promises that the pay "will be above the minimum wage," and that
"an incentive method" will be used that will reduce the turnover of
prison guards. "The method of employment will provide incentive for the
prison guard to continue to work at the prison," she says. "The
longer he works, the better the social benefits he will be given. In the
Prisons Service, too, they are no longer granting tenure until pension age
and are giving five-year contracts instead." "We are well aware of
the negative phenomena of the high rate of prison guard turnover," says
Commander Glick, who is slated to supervise the work of the franchisee on
behalf of the Prison Service. "As the state cannot dictate the prison
guards' pay to the franchisee, we decided to stipulate for the franchisee the
maximum rate of prison guard turnover that will be allowed. Every time the
turnover is more than what is permitted, we will impose a monetary fine on
him." Glick also says that the Prisons Service will determine for the
franchisee the length of the training that prison guards will receive
("no less than 250 hours"), and that it will be forbidden to employ
prison guards who have not been approved by the Prisons Service. "It
could be that the franchisee will want to hire pensioners in order to save
expenditures," he says. "It will not be able to do this, because we
will not approve pensioners." "For every deviation the franchisee
will be fined by us," promises Glick. "If a prisoner is murdered,
it will be fined. The same applies if a prison guard is attacked, if there is
an escape, if equipment is broken or if there are many complaints about
insufficient food." He is convinced that supervision through fines,
which has not proven itself against the commercial television franchises,
will succeed against the private prison franchisees. And unlike the practice
in the broadcast industry the rates for the fines here will be kept secret.
"We have to maintain secrecy," he explains, "because if the
prisoners know, for example, how much the fine is for breaking a window or
many complaints about the food, they will be able to blackmail the management
and take control of the whole prison." Dr. Yoav
Sapir, the deputy chief public defender at the Justice Ministry, is opposed
in principle to private prisons ("I find a strong moral discord in the
fact that wealthy tycoons will make more money from people's suffering")
and has difficulty believing that the Prisons Service will indeed manage to
prevent the negative phenomena that characterize the system in the U.S.
"The only way that the franchisee can increase his profits is on the
backs of the prisoners and the prison guards," he says on the basis of
the American experience. "The franchisee always tries to give the
minimum and argues about the interpretation of the requirements of the
supervisory body. If the contract requires him to give three meals a day, he
will argue about the interpretation of the word `meals.' And if he is
required to give each prisoner a soup spoon, he will argue about the size of
the spoon. In the U.S. there have been prison guards who were fired because
they gave a prisoner an extra spoonful of soup. At nearly every private
prison there is a shortage of clothing, the medical service is flawed, mental
health services hardly exist, and the rehabilitation programs are
minimal." Sapir thinks that much of this will happen here. Adato promises it won't because the franchisee will take
care to act according to the contract, which "requires us, for example,
to give medical and educational services at a higher level than in the
Prisons Service," and Glick says the Prisons Service will thwart every
attempt by the franchisee to act in this way. Waiting for the High Court
Construction of the private prison, which is scheduled to operate in 2008,
will begin in a few months, unless the High Court decides otherwise. A bench
headed by Justice Dorit Beinisch,
which deliberated on attorney Wasserman's petition about two months ago,
issued a show-cause order for the state to explain "the boundary of
appropriate privatization." Wasserman argues that prison privatization
does away with the state's monopoly on the use of force against citizens. The
justices so far refrained from disqualifying his contention. The state's
reply is to be given in the middle of December, with the justices expected to
rule by the end of the month. If the High Court does not reject privatization
outright, the success or failure of the prison will depend on the quality of
the Prisons Service supervision. Glick promises that this will be
"extremely close" and will be "carried out in real time."
However, neither the size of the supervisory team nor its ways of working is
yet clear. "What is already clear at this time," says Glick, "is that the supervisors will be working on
the prison premises and the franchisee will be obligated to connect all of
its computers to the Prisons Service computers. In that way we will know
about everything that happens inside the prison." Timor is skeptical.
"The Israeli experience in the area of supervising franchisees is not
really encouraging," he says. "It suffices to read the state
comptroller's reports about the TV franchisees, the gas companies that
maintain containers in hazardous conditions, the old age homes and the
psychiatric hospitals. I do not have many reasons for believing that the
Prison Service will know how to supervise any better than all the other
supervisory bodies in the country."
November
16, 2005 IDEX
Israel's best known diamantaire, Lev Leviev, will soon own a private jail. His Africa-Israel
real estate firm won a bid to build and operate Israel's first private jail. Leviev and Minrav, another
Israeli real estate firm, will build the 200 million NIS ($42.25 million) and
operate it for 25 years before turning it over to the state. The state will
pay the jail according to the number of prisoners being held at any one time.
In a release, the companies said they "consider themselves financial organizations
with a social mission." The successful bidders will operate
rehabilitation projects, though they might not include diamond polishing. Leviev privately owns the LLD Group, which incorporates
all his diamond related enterprises - mining, polishing plants, and various
wholesaling and retailing joint ventures. Africa-Israel, a publicly traded
company which Leviev controls, owns real estate in
Israel and Eastern Europe, a large 7-Eleven franchise, an Israeli toll road,
energy projects, fashion companies and several media operations.
November
16, 2005 Globes
Minrav Holdings Ltd. (TASE:MNRV)
and Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. (TASE:AFIL; Pink Sheets:AFIVY)
will set up Israel's first private prison, announced an inter-ministerial
committee responsible for the matter today. Minrav
and Africa-Israel beat a consortium comprising Solel
Boneh Building and Infrastructure, Dankner Investments, and GEPSA of France. Lev Leviev controls Africa Israel, and Abraham Kuznitsky is chairman and CEO of Minrav.
Minrav and Africa-Israel will build the prison and
operate it for 25 years, during which period the state will pay an annual sum
for each prisoner, under the private finance initiative (PFI) method. The
contract is worth NIS 1.4 billion, including NIS 250 million in construction
costs. Minrav and Africa-Israel will be paid NIS 64
million a year, amounting to NIS 1.6 billion over the period of the contract.
They will also receive a NIS 47 million set-up grant, to be paid when
construction of the prison is completed and the state authorizes its
operation. Minrav and Africa-Israel are expected to
get an annual return of 6-10% on the investment. Construction of the prison
is scheduled to begin in early 2006, and to be completed within three years.
Located south of Beersheva, the prison will house
800-1,000 low to medium-risk inmates.
October 28, 2005 The
Jerusalem Post
The High Court of Justice on Thursday gave the state 60 days to explain which
of its responsibilities regarding the imprisonment of criminals could be
farmed out to a private entrepreneur and which it was bound by the country's
constitutional system to reserve for itself. The decision came at the end of
a hearing on a petition against a Knesset amendment to the Prison Ordinance
allowing for the establishment of a private prison. The petitioners, the
Human Rights Division of the Netanya Academic
College of Law and retired Gundar Shlomo Tweezer, called on the
court to overturn the law on the grounds that it violated the Basic Law:
Government and the human rights granted to prisoners by the Basic Law: Human
Freedom and Dignity. The tender for the prison has already been issued and
the state's representative at the hearing, attorney Yochi
Gnessin, told the court the winner was to be chosen
within the next few weeks. At the beginning of the hearing, Justice Dorit Beinisch, who headed the
panel of three justices, interrupted the attorneys for the petitioners, Gilad Barnea and Aviv
Wasserman, and appeared to be hostile to the petition. The court's policy, in
general, is to not overrule Knesset legislation because of the constitutional
principle of separation of powers. But as the hearing proceeded, she seemed
to tone down her comments. Barnea charged that the
amendment marked the first time the government is privatizing prerogatives
belonging to the core of its responsibilities." Beinisch
interrupted Barnea and told him it was not the
first time and that the government had already privatized other crucial
services. The question Barnea continued was where
to draw the line. "Until what point can the state make itself
smaller?" he asked the court. "In this case the government has
given up all its prerogatives and allowed a private company to implement them
and make decisions generally reserved for the government." According to
the amendment the prison will be run entirely by the private company. Prison
officials will be empowered to punish prisoners for misconduct deprive them of benefits and strip search them. Beinisch replied that the government had still not worked
out the details of how the prison would be run by the government. The current
law called for a single pilot project to see how it worked she added. "A
pilot is an experiment using human beings retorted Barnea.
The amendment is not a provisional law and the idea of building one
experimental private prison will get lost. There is no precedent for this in
terms of the breadth and depth of the prerogatives granted to a private
company regarding people whose human rights must be protected."
According to Gnessin the Knesset had not forcibly
deprived the executive of its prerogatives to run prisons. On the contrary it
was the state that willingly yielded the prerogatives. Therefore the
petitioners were wrong in maintaining that the law violated the Basic Law:
Government. Furthermore he said the amendment did not deprive the government
of all its rights and responsibilities regarding the imprisonment of
criminals; the details still had to be worked out. At this point in the
proceedings Justice Ayala Procaccia asked the state
attorneys to list the prerogatives the state felt it could give up and those
which it could not transfer to private hands. The court turned her question
into a decision ordering the state to provide the list within 60 days and
giving the petitioners 30 days to respond.
April 14, 2005 Jerusalem
Post
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel appealed to the Supreme Court
against a decision by the Tel Aviv District Administrative Court, rejecting
its petition to disclose the details of the tender for the first privately
run prison in Israel. Attorney Dori Spivak said he submitted the petition to the district
court after the government refused his request to read the more than 1,000
pages of the tender. "The authorities are trying to avoid public
supervision of their activities and make a fait accompli by choosing the
winner and signing a contract before the public has the chance to realize its
right to examine the details of the tender," charged Spivak.
March 16, 2005 Jerusalem
Post
The Human Rights Division of the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan and a retired prison commander on Wednesday
petitioned the High Court of Justice against a law paving the way for
establishing a private prison in Israel. The petitioners charged that the law
contradicts the Basic Law: Government and the Basic Law: Human Dignity and
Freedom. The government law went into effect on March 31, 2004. It grants the
Israel Prison Service the right to allow a private company to "build,
administer and operate" a prison. In initiating the law, the government
explained that state prisons were badly overcrowded, lacked minimal hygienic
conditions and provided poor medical services and that it did not have the
money to improve the existing ones or build new ones. The petitioners also
wrote that even though prisoners have lost some of their personal freedoms,
they continue to have basic rights guaranteed by the Basic Law: Human Dignity
and Freedom. They warned that these rights will be jeopardized by the fact
that the private company will have so much power over them, that the manpower
in these prisons can be expected to be of low quality and that the state will
not be able to closely supervise the affairs in the prison.
November 24, 2003
Gunmen killed two civilian Israeli security guards near Jerusalem last night
as they were keeping watch near the West Bank barrier that Israel is
building, Israeli security officials said. In other violence, Israeli
soldiers shot dead two Palestinians, one an 11-year-old boy, in separate
confrontations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians and the
Israeli military said. The two security guards were gunned down near
Abu Dis, a suburb on the eastern edge of Jerusalem,
where part of the barrier is under construction. The guards, who were
traveling in a car when they were shot, were employed by a private security
firm. (The Seattle Times)
July 10, 2003
Four proposals
were submitted yesterday, in the early stages of the tender, for establishing
a new prison in Be'er Sheva.
The interministerial tender issued a tender for the
planning, establishment and operation of the prison as part of the state's
efforts to privatize the prisons. The tender has two stages. The early
phase is
when the
committee decides which bodies are eligible to bid for the project. The
second phase, which will need to be accompanied by Knesset legislation
granting the rights for the private franchise, will determine which bid wins
the project. The winner of the bid will be responsible for planning,
building and operating the prison, and will be similar to the British model
of privatized prisons. (Haaretz.com)
October 10, 2002
The security conglomerate Group 4 Falck, which
pioneered the private contracting of detention facilities and prisons in
Britain, has decided to withdraw the private guards employed by one of its
offshoots at Israeli settlements in the West Bank after the Guardian raised
questions about their behavior and the legality of their role. The
company, the world's second biggest security firm, took a controlling stake
earlier this year in an Israeli security company, Hashmira,
which employs at least 100 armed guards at settlements. A Guardian
investigation in the settlement of Kedumim showed
that Hashmira's guards work closely with Israel's
military and security apparatus. In the name of "security"
the guards, many of whom are settlers, routinely prevent Palestinian
villagers from cultivating their own fields, traveling to schools, hospitals
and shops in nearby towns, and receiving emergency medical assistance.
With prisons in the United States, Australia and South Africa, as well as the
UK, Group 4 Falck has earned a reputation for
pushing private security into new domains. With 230,000 employees in
more than 80 countries, Group 4 Falck is at the
vanguard of a globalising private security industry
projected to earn revenues of $200 bn by
2001. Group 4 Falck, based in Denmark, paid
$30m in March for a 50% stake in Hashmira, Israel's
largest private security company. But reports last month in the Danish
newspaper Politiken that Hashmira,
its new acquisition, was operating in the West Bank sparked outrage among
Danish MPs and human rights experts. "They are making money off
people's misery and are complicit in the maintenance of settlements which the
UN has with absolute clarity deemed illegal," said the Danish Socialist
MP Soren Sondergaard.
(Guardian Unlimited)
G4S
Mar 12, 2016 securitysales.com
G4S Sells Business in Israel Amid Accusations of Being Complicit to Human
Rights Abuses in Prisons
The world’s largest security firm is selling its business in Israel, yet
the reason why is up for debate. G4S announced on Thursday that the news was
for purely “commercial reasons,” however a boycott campaign against the
company is taking responsibility, according to Newsweek. The global Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign claims G4S was complicit in Israeli
human rights abuses within the prisons it operated in against Palestinian
prisoners. “Since 2013, we have been running a review of our business
portfolio to determine which businesses we want to remain invested in and
which we are looking to divest from, purely to streamline the business and to
get a greater degree of strategic focus,” G4S Spokesman Nigel Fairbrass said in the report. The security company has
8,000 employees in Israel and while it says none work at prisons or are in
control of prisons in the West Bank, it supplies the prisons with security
equipment. BDS has criticized investors in G4S for their involvement with the
company. In fact, The Bill Gates Foundation was pressured into selling its
$170 million stake in the company in 2014 when protests occurred outside of
its offices in Seattle, London and Johannesburg, according to the report. “As
at the height of the international boycott of apartheid South Africa, BDS
pressure is making some of the world’s largest corporations realize that
profiting from Israeli apartheid and colonialism is bad for business,” said Mahmoud Nawajaa, a spokesman
for the Palestinian BDS National Committee. “We are starting to notice a
domino effect.”
Dec 6, 2015 english.pnn.ps
A UN body that has been facing pressure to end its links with security
company G4S over its role in Israeli human rights abuses has announced that
it no longer has contracts with the company. G4S has been providing services
to UNHCR in Jordan but a spokesperson told a reporter last Monday that the
body does not have any contracts with the firm. The announcement was made
following a wave of protests online and at UN offices across 5 major cities
over the weekend calling on the UN to end all of its contracts $22m worth of
contracts with G4S. G4S is the target of an international campaign over its
role in Israeli prisons and check points and the fact it helps to run an
Israeli police academy. Investigations in September 2014 found G4S guards to
be working at UNHCR buildings in Amman and at Syrian refugee camps in Zaatari and Azraq, leading to
the start of BDS campaigning on the issue. UN documents show that UNHCR in
Jordan had contracts with G4S worth $1.7m in 2014. Sources familiar with the
matter have told campaigners that UNHCR started moving security contracts
from G4S to a local company earlier this year. Other UN bodies including
UNICEF, the UNDP and UNOPS still have contracts with the company. More than
200 organisations have called on the UN to bar the organisation from having contracts doing so violates the
UN’s procurement code of conduct. The #UNdropG4S campaign has set up a web page that makes it easy for people to write to the UN to
voice their concerns and are urging people to join a Thunderclap
social media action. Yazeed Halaseh,
member of the Jordan BDS group who campaign against G4S in Jordan, said: “We
welcome the announcement of UNHCR in Jordan that it is no longer hiring G4S.
G4S is at the heart of Israel’s use of mass incarceration to repress
Palestinian opposition to its military occupation and settler colonialism. We
hope that the UN will listen to the thousands of people who are taking action
and will end all of its contracts with G4S.” Reverend Don Wagner, Friends of Sabeel North America, who began investigating the
relationship between G4S and the UN in 2014, said: “We were shocked to
discover G4S agents ushering refugees into the UNHCR Amman office in
September of 2014. News that this office no longer holds contracts with G4S
is refreshing. It builds momentum for the UN as a whole to follow suit and to
uphold human rights and human dignity everywhere.” Rafat
Sub Laban from Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer, who started lobbying the UN on its contracts
with G4S in April, said: “Recent weeks have seen a wave of mass arrests by
Israeli occupation forces aimed at repressing protests and imposing control
and collective punishment on Palestinians in the occupied territory. Since
the beginning of October, Israeli occupation forces arrested over 2,050
Palestinians including at least 350 children and over 210 Palestinians
including 4 minors who were placed under administrative detention without
charge or trial. Many of those who were arrested remain detained by Israel.”
“These political prisoners are held in prisons and interrogation centres that G4S helps Israel to run, making G4S
complicit in Israel’s torture, ill-treatment and administrative detention
without charge or trial of Palestinians. “Addameer
welcomes this news from UNHCR in Jordan and hopes the UN will now terminate
all its contracts with G4S and to distance itself from complicity in human
rights violations.” In June 2014, the Gates Foundation divested the whole of
its $170m holding in the company as a result of an international campaign.
The US Methodist Church, the largest protestant church in the US, divested
from G4S after coalition campaigning brought the issue to a vote.
Universities in Oslo and Bergen refused to give G4S contracts over its role
in Israel’s prison system following student campaigns. In the UK, at least 5
student unions have voted to cancel contracts with G4S, and students
successfully pressured 2 other universities not to renew contracts with the
company. Major charities in South Africa, the Netherlands and elsewhere
terminated contracts with G4S. Facing mounting international pressure, G4S
announced in 2014 that G4S “did not expect to renew” its contract with the
Israeli Prison Service when it expires in 2017, and it has also said it will
end some aspects of its involvement in illegal Israeli settlements. BDS
activists have said they will continue their campaign until G4S ends all
aspects of its support for Israeli violations of international law.
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