Antony Loewenstein

Private prisons and detention centres are booming businesses (hello Serco). Crisis, real or otherwise, are exploited by corporations who come in to supposedly save the day (cut costs, increase efficiency etc).

The reality, explained in this piece on Alternet about the US, is rather different:

In a recently published report, “Banking on Bondage: Mass Incarceration and Private Prisons,” the American Civil Liberties Union examines the history of prison privatization and finds that private prison companies owe their continued and prosperous existence to skyrocketing immigration detention post September 11 as well as the firm hold they have gained over elected and appointed officials.

David Shapiro, the primary author of the ACLU report, told AlterNet that prior to the early 1980s, private prisons were “virtually nonexistent.” That quickly changed as the War on Drugs ‘tough on crime’ mentality swept the nation with institution of draconian sentencing and release laws for nonviolent offenders, causing an explosion in US incarceration rate.  State and federal governments increasingly struggled with overcrowded prisons and the rising costs of housing the rapidly growing pool of inmates.  

Coupled with the emergence of privatization madness under Ronald Reagan (a pattern that has continued under both Democrat and Republican administrations), skyrocketing imprisonment presented the perfect opportunity for the private sector to get in on the action, with promises of cost savings and more efficient operations than government-run facilities.  In 1984, the Corrections Corporation of America was awarded a contract to operate a public jail in Hamilton County, Tennessee, and the nation’s first-ever private prison was born. 

According to the ACLU report, From 1970 to 2005, the number of people locked up in the US shot up by 700 percent. Meanwhile, between 1990 and 2009 the number of prisoners behind private prison bars exploded from 7,000 to 129,000 inmates, a growth rate of 1600 percent.  But the private prison boom of the ‘90s did not last. 

…

According to the ACLU report, heightened immigration enforcement following the 2001 terrorist attacks were largely responsible for resurrecting the private prison boom…

My following investigation appeared in Crikey this week:

It was a Saturday night community event and could have been in any small Australian town. A fund-raiser was being held for the Thai floods victims and proceedings began with local boys and girls playing short classical pieces on an electric piano. The room was colourful with red tablecloths and a predominantly Chinese, Thai and Malay audience, with a smattering of white Anglos.

This was Christmas Island in November and I was there to visit the large detention centre run by British multinational Serco and the Immigration Department. With a population of about 1500, situated three-and-a-half hours from Perth and serviced by only one airline, Virgin, as an Australian satellite, the island should be a tourist Mecca. Warm weather, Buddhist temples on the coast, palm trees, beautiful vistas across the Indian Ocean, lush rainforests, coconuts falling from trees and unique birds all contribute to a tropical oasis.

But these facts ignore what the Australian government has created out of sight and out of mind. “Everybody thinks of us as a prison island,” a United Christmas Island Workers union member told me. “I travel to Australia or Asia and that’s all they say.”

Gordon Thomson, head of the United Christmas Island Workers union — currently leading a fight against CI’s phosphate mine owners over higher wage demands — said: “We shouldn’t lock people up; it’s like a prison here.”

Christmas Island is full of contradictions. One night I attended, with hundreds of others, an annual event at a Buddhist temple. Two shamans were flown in from Malaysia to bless the community. One, with detailed tattoos on his back and arms, sucked two dummies for five hours while handing out sweets to children. He and his colleague were apparently in a trance and kept the crowd transfixed while the Malay community provided massive helpings of rice, meat, water and beer for the assembled crowd. Large, colourful incense rockets lit the night sky with wisps of jumping fire.

During the evening, I spoke to a young teacher who worked with small children in detention on the island. He had arrived with high hopes of being able to change the system from within. He said Serco staff were friendly enough but told a revealing anecdote. His school had put together an induction manual and gave it to Serco to examine. The response was that some Serco staff were unable to complete the task because they couldn’t read or write.

The island’s biggest employer is now Serco, with most of the workers housed in ’70s style, low-rise apartment blocks. The island’s infrastructure, despite periodic Australian government funding, is lacking, and resentment towards Canberra was palpable. As more boats arrive — I saw two carrying 100 asylum seekers come into shallow waters — many residents told me they couldn’t understand why asylum seekers were being so well housed while they still waited on better and more affordable housing and job opportunities.

The Labor government’s island administrator, Brian Lacy, said he regularly asked Canberra for more resources and had hired a consultant to assist designing a tourist campaign to reframe the island as more than just a prison.

The detention centre is situated on the far side of the island, a long way from any habitation; my visits there required navigating around various road closures due to the current crab migration. During the March riots, footage of a burning detention centre shocked Australia and the world. Viewing that vantage point requires a short hike up a hill. Road access is now blocked, I was told, to deny media easy accessibility.

The vista was expansive and revealing. The amount of resources required to maintain such a centre — when prices on the island for even the most basic products grow exponentially — is extraordinary. Currently holding about 700 asylum seekers, from a peak of more than 3000 earlier this year, an Immigration Department spokeswoman told me the instruction from Canberra was now to maintain relatively low numbers to avoid over-crowding and rising tensions. Nobody sleeps in tents at the centre any more, a common occurrence in the past.

The feeling of isolation, similar to the Curtin detention centre, is key to the soaring mental health problems of staff and detainees. Sister Joan Kelleher, who lives on the island and daily visits detainees, told me she was against mandatory detention because she saw the effects it was having on the men she was seeing.

On the day that I encountered Sister Kelleher on the foreshore, she was accompanied by four Afghan Hazara men, ranging in age from 30s to 40s, who were allowed a few hours with the woman, wading in the ocean and cooking a barbecue of sausages, onions and bread rolls. They had all been in detention, in Darwin and on Christmas Island, for more than 20 months and were awaiting judicial reviews of their claims. They were all on anti-depressant medication and keen to tell me their stories about repression in the Pakistani town of Quetta, where their wives and children still lived in constant danger.

The following day, a few hours before I left, I was finally granted access inside the detention centre to see one Hazara Afghan (after initially being rejected by bureaucrats on the mainland and negotiating with the facility’s departmental manager). I was introduced to the head case manager, Sally, after being ushered through what she acknowledged was “a maximum security prison”. She later added: “If it was built more recently it would be different, softer, less like a jail.”

After passing through heavy security doors, we arrived in a compound of clinical meeting rooms. Sally said Mohammed (not his real name) would arrive shortly. In the meantime she said she was happy to answer any of my questions (by this stage I knew I was getting red-carpet treatment, if such a thing was possible.)

I asked if she believed privatised detention, companies designed to make a profit from asylum seekers, was preferable. Although Sally said there were problems, she said Serco was an essential partner because the public service simply wasn’t capable of handling security, “intel gathering” and other services unless “we hire many more people”.

It reflected something I saw in other centres across the country, the symbiotic relationship between DIAC and Serco: they can’t live without the other and support each other’s secretive culture.

Mohammed arrived and through a Farsi translator — who told me he was from Afghanistan and came by boat in 1999 — explained that he was very depressed after 22 months in detention. He barely made eye contact and looked down at his hands during our time together. He couldn’t go back to Pakistan for safety reasons but he said DIAC never gave any concrete details about his upcoming judicial review. He took six different anti-depressants daily.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist currently working on a book about disaster capitalism

My following investigation appeared in Crikey this week:

The drive from Broome in Western Australia to Derby, the town closest to the remote Curtin detention centre in the Kimberley, is two-and-a-half hours through endless, surprisingly green desert. Mobile phone reception soon dies after the journey begins and from there you see few people or cars for as far as the eye can see.

The roadhouse at Willare, a red, dusty stop close to Derby, has a BBQ, swimming pool and little else. There is overpriced water and food sitting in a bain-marie that looks like it has survived the apocalypse. This is where many Serco staff stay while working at the Curtin detention centre around an hour away — but there is little for them to do except drink and sleep between 12-hour shifts.

Derby has a population of around 3000 people. It is a depressing place, with temperatures close to 35 degrees and Aboriginal men and women catatonic and drunk at all hours of the day lying in parks. There is an indigenous suicide every fortnight in the town. I spent time with an Aboriginal man, living in an abandoned and dirty house on the outskirts of Derby, who told me through alcohol breath that he wasn’t aware refugees were imprisoned down the road but “I don’t like that they’re locked up”.

I recently stayed in the town for four days to visit detainees in Curtin and investigate the role of Serco and the Immigration Department in maintaining mandatory detention. Very few people visit Curtin due to its isolation so the detainees were pleased to see a friendly face and hear news from the outside world.

The federal government’s latest softening of long-term detention should alleviate some of this suffering though the relationship between DIAC and Serco will continue.

Curtin is situated inside an Australian Airforce Base, around 30 minutes drive from Derby, and can only be accessed by prior arrangement with Serco. Each day that I visited the heat reached 40 degrees and the humidity caused everybody to scurry under fans or air-conditioners. The former African refugee who manned the checkpoint into the centre — he worked for MSS, sub-contracted by Serco, and wore khaki shorts, shirt and felt khaki hat — checked our IDs, used a walkie-talkie to call his Serco superiors inside and soon waved us through.

Around 900 men are currently housed at Curtin and there are signs of the mental trauma many doctors and former detainees warned would occur if the Labor government re-opened under Serco management (as interviewees predicted to me in Crikey in May last year).

A recent report about Curtin released by Curtin University human rights academics Caroline Fleay and Linda Briskman, The Hidden Men, details countless examples of asylum seeker suffering mental trauma due to mandatory detention, contractor IHMS not providing adequate medical care and CCTV cameras recording counselling sessions, violating asylum seeker privacy.

The overwhelming sense of futility and bureaucratic ineptitude permeates Curtin. The Serco contract with the Australian government — recently revealed with colleague Paul Farrell in New Matilda  — explained the lack of training required by Serco staff. The profit motive of Serco ensures that the barest minimum of training is given to prospective workers. The company was fined nearly $15 million this month for failing to properly care for asylum seekers.

I saw evidence of this constantly during my time in Curtin. I had requested to visit, with plenty of notice, a number of detainees from a range of countries, including Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Many have received refugee status by the Australian government but are waiting indefinitely for security clearance from ASIO (a process without transparency or appeal).

One afternoon a Serco employee advised me that it would be possible to see more requested asylum seekers the next day but by morning, speaking to a different Serco staff, I was informed that it was impossible due to “security” reasons. “You should have given us more warning and it could have been arranged,” the manager said. Such stories are legendary, especially in remote centres, and often DIAC and Serco seemingly aim to refuse visitor requests to deliberately upset the isolated detainees. Such refusals, in such a remote location that sees barely any new or familiar faces, are against Serco and DIAC rules.

Curtin is a wind-swept centre with electrified fences and red dirt that seeps into your eyes, ears and shoes. Expansion plans appear imminent, with empty spaces for more compounds on the way. During the heat of the day, it’s virtually impossible to see anybody outside but by late afternoon, as the sun is setting and a cooler breeze hits the dirt, men start playing football and running around a make-shift, dirt mini-oval.

I was told throughout my visit that Serco staff were too busy to find other requested detainees in the various compounds and yet I saw Serco employees sitting around strumming a guitar and sitting in a large air-conditioned mess room, watching quietly with the asylum seekers while I spoke to them for hours daily.

Occasional excursions outside the centre take the asylum seekers to Derby but one Tamil told me that he found it grimly amusing that a proposed location was the Derby jail, hardly an appropriate place for people who are already in jail.

Most of the Serco staff are fly in, fly out — though as one local told me, “fit in or f-ck pff”, such is the feeling towards those who contribute little to the community and force prices up — and the attitude to asylum seekers is very mixed. One man, Brian, said that he had worked in Curtin during the Howard years, lived in Perth and now came to Curtin for short stints of well-paid work. As he walked me to a compound on the far side of the centre to see the asylum seekers, dubbed the “Sandpit”, he told me that: “We treat them better than many people on the outside. We feed them and give them lawyers. It’s us, the staff, who have it tough, having to sometimes be abused and assaulted by the ‘clients’.” This attitude was pervasive inside Curtin.

I spent time with two Tamil asylum seekers, both in their 20s, both proficient in English and both remarkably aware of Australian culture and history. When they arrived on Christmas Island, volunteers taught them about the White Australia policy, Ned Kelly, multiculturalism, Australia Day, the Stolen Generations and the Kevin Rudd apology to indigenous people. One had even seen and loved the Rolf De Heer film set in Arnhem Land, 10 Canoes, while still in Colombo.

Both men told me that every day somebody inside detention tried to self-harm or kill themselves and the mental state of many friends was troubling. They were given no time-line for final decisions on security clearances though in the last few days had both just received bridging visas.

Boredom was an enemy that was fought by going to the gym, downloading movies from the internet or calling home, though this was one of the major factors, one Tamil said, for men to break down because families simply couldn’t understand why their sons and husbands seeking asylum were locked up for endless months.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist currently working on a book about disaster capitalism

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks in Western Australia and Christmas Island researching a book and other projects on disaster capitalism (overseas travels planned in 2012). I investigated the role of Serco in remote detention centres, Woodside attempting to develop a multi-billion dollar gas hub in the Kimberley and a tropical paradise being used for a prison.

Many articles and much else forthcoming, but here are the photos (Derby and Curtin detention centre, Broome and James Price Point and Christmas Island).

Is there anything Serco can’t do with enough money? It’s the company that’s always in the right spot at the right time (helped, of course, by the fact that countless politicians on all sides believe in “efficiency”, aka cutting services).

The Guardian reports:

Privately employed engineers are being trained to detect “dirty bombs” so that they can replace striking Border Agency guards during next week’s day of action against public sector pension reforms.

Staff from the services giant Serco are to be employed at four major points of entry into the UK to operate “portals” – which detect radiation and nuclear material on vehicles – when thousands of union members are expected to take industrial action.

Unions say Serco employees cannot receive the necessary specialist training in such a short period and will leave the country vulnerable to attack. They also argue that Serco staff do not have powers of arrest and have not received training to check travel documents.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “We have serious concerns about the private contractors’ ability to do the job, and the use of them to cover for striking staff. This latest revelation further underlines the sheer desperation of [the UK Border Agency] to paint a picture of business as usual when it’s obvious to everyone that’s not going to be the case.”

Yet more evidence that the British multinational Serco, running Australia’s detention centres, simply aren’t up to the task. But don’t expect the government to do anything about it any time soon. They need somebody, anybody, to take the blame for its dysfunctional refugee policies (via The Age):

The multinational company that runs Australia’s immigration detention network has been fined $15 million for failing in its duty of care to asylum seekers and underperformance .

The immigration department has told a federal parliamentary inquiry it had docked $14.8 million from monthly payments to SERCO between March 2010 and June 2011 because of poor management of the detention centres, and docked another $215,000 from SERCO’s contract to run immigration housing centres.

SERCO was paid $375 million to run immigration centres last year, and $101 million in the three months to October 2011.

The secretive contract the federal government signed with SERCO withholds payment for audited ”abatements” each month. Escapes, failure to secure perimeter fences, not providing activities or reporting major incidents, not giving access to visitors, interpreters or legal representatives, poor building conditions and food safety can trigger fee reductions.

The penalty is limited by the contract to 5 per cent of SERCO’s monthly fee. The $15 million fine, revealed in written submissions to the inquiry, is therefore near the upper limit of what the Immigration Department would have been contractually able to penalise SERCO in a period plagued by riots, fires, suicides and escalating detainee self harm.

Following last week’s exclusive in New Matilda publishing the British multinational Serco immigration detention contract with the Australian government, the Immigration Department was asked a range of questions. This is how they responded (thanks to Marni Cordell and Paul Farrell):

We asked DIAC for comment on their contract with Serco and how it serves the welfare of staff and detainees. Their responses are chillingly bureaucratic

On Wednesday New Matilda published the first publicly available version of the 2009 Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) contract with British multinational Serco. The contract was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and reveals the most comprehensive information yet about the running of Australian detention centres.

There are a number of very worrying terms in this contract. These include the hiring of unqualified guards and the classification of unauthorised visits from the media as “critical” incidents and clinical depression as a “minor” incident. This material attracted a huge response from NM readers, and was picked up by a number of other outlets.

NM contacted DIAC for comment before publishing the contract but received no response until yesterday. Today we’re publishing DIAC’s side of the story. Here are their responses to some of our questions about the contract signed with Serco in 2009.

We asked DIAC why, under the terms of the contract, general security guards with no security qualifications can be employed at Australia’s immigration detention centres for a period of six months.

A spokesperson for the department said:

“Client support officers must hold a minimum of a Certificate level II in security or equivalent, or obtain a Certificate II in security within six months of commencement. The six months represents a maximum period that client support officers have to obtain a Certificate level II, and is not a period when no security training is undertaken. New staff are mentored by a qualified Serco officer during this time.”

The spokesperson continued:

“The department has contracted Serco to deliver service to people in detention in a range of detention facilities. Serco must ensure that all service provider personnel who carry out work under this contract are appropriately skilled, trained and qualified.”

The language is highly bureaucratic — but it doesn’t say much. We asked for more detail on what that training involves and were told that that was a question for Serco. We received a similar response to a number of our requests for clarification. However, as NM reported on Wednesday, Serco is bound by its contract with DIAC not to talk to the media.

Under the contract, Serco employees, agents and contractors must not “Make any public statement; release any information to, make any statement to, deal with any inquiry from or otherwise advise the media; [or] publish distribute or otherwise make available any information or material to third parties”.

NM also asked DIAC why was there no requirement for security specific training in the induction training section of the contract.

The spokesperson told us: “The section on induction training should be read in context with all aspects of Annexure A — induction training is under 1.1, with security under 1.5.”

Here DIAC appears to be suggesting that the rest of Annexure A contains more details about security requirements than those reported by NM. In fact the other heads in the Annexure relate to: first aid, caterers, dietitians, drivers, linguists, migration officers, gymnasium staff. On our analysis, none of these other sections have any more information about security training.

The spokesperson continued:

“The induction training course is aimed at equipping officers for their role of ensuring the safety security and well-being of all of those within the facility — including clients, staff and visitors — as well as the physical security of the facility.”

Once again, the response fails to provide any details about what is actually involved in induction training. The vagueness of the training requirements is exactly why we put the questions to DIAC, who have provided us with more vagueness in kind.

Next up we asked why clinical depression and childbirth are considered “minor” incidents under the contract, while unauthorised media access or a high profile visitor being refused access are considered ”critical”.

We were told:

“A critical incident is an incident or event where there is serious injury or a threat to life, or which critically affects the security or safety of the facility. Unauthorised media presence and high profile visitor refused access fall into this category for a number of reasons, including impact on security and flow-on effects for asylum claims under the Refugee Convention.”

The spokesperson clarified this statement to tell us that the department is concerned about asylum seekers being identified by the media, as this may affect their claims for asylum.

However, given that the media are capable of respecting other reasonable requests for anonymity, we fail to see why this extra level of protection is needed for detained asylum seekers.

The spokesperson continued:

“Minor incidents are incidents or events which affect to a lesser degree the welfare of people in detention or which threaten the success of escorts, transfer or removal activities or the safety and security of the facility. Clinical depression and the birth of a child fall into this category.”

So according to the department, unauthorised media access raises duty of care issues that clinical depression, child birth and starvation do not. It’s hard not to conclude that DIAC’s priority is the protection of their public image rather than the well-being of asylum seekers.

As NM reported on Wednesday, although Serco is answerable directly to DIAC, the contract contains no requirement for periodic independent audits of Serco’s performance. We asked the department why not — and whether there had ever been an independent audit of Serco’s management of Australian detention centres.

We received no clear answer to the second part of the question, but we were told:

“DIAC ensures that Serco’s performance is rigorously monitored. We undertake an ongoing internal audit program, to ensure that Serco meets its contractual obligations.

“Immigration detention centres and alternative places of detention are assessed every month as per the Serco contract. Immigration residential housing and immigration transit accommodation are assessed quarterly.

“At the department’s option, the audit can be undertaken by a review team comprising of the following: departmental representatives, departmental facilities personnel, departmental regional or state office personnel, and/or an independent third party”.

However, all of this remains at the department’s discretion — there is no requirement for there to be third party oversight.

Once again, DIAC referred NM to Serco for more details on this. We were told that Serco had reported to the department that NGOs such as Amnesty and the Red Cross often conducted audits of detention centres. It is deeply concerning if this is a suggestion that human rights groups, acting on their own volition, are seen by DIAC as an adequate alternative to mandatory independent oversight.

DIAC’s responses to our questions are couched in the vague and sterile language of bureaucracy. Untrained security guards who are thrown into the volatile environment of a detention centre are provided with mentors — but there’s still no indication whether they’re provided with the training and support needed to cope such difficult situations. There’s no sense from DIAC that the welfare of guards and detainees is at stake here.

The response to our question about incident reporting strikes a similarly dull note. Even if concern for the fair processing of claims for asylum is the primary reason why unauthorised media visits are classified as critical incidents — and we don’t believe it is — the distrust of the media is misplaced. It’s a blow against transparency to present media outlets as so untrustworthy they can’t talk to detainees unsupervised.

NM will keep publishing on Serco and maintain our focus on Australia’s detention system. We’re concerned about the welfare of asylum seekers held in this system without due oversight and we’re concerned for the health and safety of staff. We’ll keep pushing DIAC for more transparency, too — but after their responses to our questions about the Serco contract, it’s hard to believe that we’re working for the same ends.

What a surprise:

Security guards working at the Pontville detention centre [in Tasmania] say they have been sacked in a shock move by operator Serco.

Devastated security staff contacted the Mercury yesterday, saying they had been told their services were no longer required because Serco would rely on security cameras for external surveillance.

Therese Mitchell worked her last shift yesterday after being told last Monday she was being retrenched. She said the blow came just two days before the six-month probation period clause in her contract expired.

“We thought we were going to be there until the detention centre was finished with,” Ms Mitchell said last night.

She was one of about 36 staff working for Wilson Security, who were subcontracted by Serco to guard the perimeter of the centre.

Serco staff guard the inmates inside the facility on behalf of the Immigration Department.

Ms Mitchell said all but nine of the Wilson security guards had been sacked and would struggle to find work elsewhere.

“The security industry is really dry, there’s no work out there,” she said.

Another guard, who did not want to be named, said he and the remaining Wilson workers also expected to get the sack within a fortnight.

“As of tomorrow, we will be guarding a short stretch of fence that has a couple of gaps underneath it and as soon as they fix those gaps we’ll be out of there I’m sure,” he said.

It was heart-breaking news after putting up with “horrible working conditions” for months. He said they often worked unprotected in sub-zero temperatures.

“One night, it got down to minus eight. We had one fellow go home one night with hypothermia,” he said.

He said they were continually promised by management that heated guard huts would be built, but they never arrived.

A spokesman for the Immigration Department said staffing and security issues were a matter for Serco.

A Serco spokesman said the security contractors were employed on a temporary basis while a surveillance system was brought online.

He said security at the centre was “robust” but did not respond to the guards’ claims that the surveillance system had been out of operation since Tuesday.

“We have staffing levels and security and contingency measures appropriate to the low-risk profile of the people in our care at Pontville,” he said.

Following our world exclusive revelations yesterday about the Serco contract with the Australian government (stories here, here and here), last night ABC Radio’s PM featured an interview with the editor of the independent publication that ran the articles, New Matilda:

MARK COLVIN: The news website New Matilda has obtained the contracts under which the private company SERCO runs Australia’s detention centres.

The website used Freedom of Information laws to get access to the first publicly available version of the 2009 Immigration Department contract with the British multinational.

The editor of New Matilda is Marni Cordell.

I asked her what the FOI revealed.

MARNI CORDELL: There’s actually quite a lot; there’s 700 pages of information.

So the main things that we’ve picked up on is that general security guards at detention centres can be hired without any formal qualifications. So they have six months before they are required to have a Certificate II which is a base level security qualification.

MARK COLVIN: So no security qualifications and presumably no psychological qualifications or anything like that either?

MARNI CORDELL: That’s right. There is a requirement that staff undertake mental health training but there’s no specific details about what that involves.

MARK COLVIN: Do they get any instruction during the first six months on how to deal with people who are depressed or trying to commit suicide?

MARNI CORDELL: They do undertake some induction training at the start of their contract and that involves mental health awareness training, cultural awareness, conflict de-escalation. But there aren’t many details on what that induction training involves.

MARK COLVIN: But what does the contract tell you about how those things, depression and trying to commit suicide, how those things are seen in terms of priorities?

MARNI CORDELL: There is a listing of different levels of incident; so there were three levels of incident; there’s critical, there’s major and there’s minor incidents and they all have different reporting requirements for Serco.

So critical incidents obviously involve things like hostage situations, riots, mass break-outs, but they also, surprisingly, include things like high profile visitor refused access; so if someone is high profile and has been refused access to a detention centre Serco is obliged to tell the department within 30 minutes of that happening.

MARK COLVIN: Are media visits also critical incidents?

MARNI CORDELL: Also media visits. So an unauthorised media presence at a facility is considered a critical incident.

Minor incidents are things such as voluntary starvation for under 24 hours, childbirth and clinical depression.

MARK COLVIN: Clinical depression is a minor incident?

MARNI CORDELL: That’s right.

MARK COLVIN: What about somebody trying to commit suicide?

MARNI CORDELL: That’s listed in a critical incident, yep.

MARK COLVIN: What about the openness, what about the transparency of Serco and its contracts?

MARNI CORDELL: There are a couple of mentions of their dealing with the media. So Serco employees are contractually obliged not to speak to the media at all. They’re not allowed to make a public statement or deal quote “with any inquiry from or otherwise advise the media”. And they are required to report to the department but there is no contractual obligation for an independent audit of their dealings.

MARK COLVIN: I think Serco has said in the past that it’s wrong to call it a secretive organisation or to say that its dealings with the public are secretive; what do you say now that you’ve seen the contract?

MARNI CORDELL: Well it’s obvious from the contract that they’re not only secretive but they’re also contractually obliged to be secretive and they’re not allowed to discuss any matters to do with the running of immigration detention centres.

MARK COLVIN: Is that their fault or the department’s fault?

MARNI CORDELL: Well it’s in the contract so they’re obliged not to do that.

MARK COLVIN: So it’s the department that’s imposing that on them?

MARNI CORDELL: I would say it’s coming from both parties but yes it certainly is in the contract.

MARK COLVIN: What about the independent audit, you just mentioned that briefly; does that mean that nobody can really oversee them?

MARNI CORDELL: There’s no obligation for there to be an independent audit, so that certainly makes it difficult to know what exactly is going on inside the immigration detention centres. So there are obligations for them to report directly to the Department of Immigration but there’s no requirement that an independent audit takes place.

MARK COLVIN: Was it very difficult to get this FOI request through?

MARNI CORDELL: It took some time yes. We’ve also got the FOI document upon the site; we also have a document that is a leaked version of the same contract. Serco has blocked some sections of the FOI document and some of those sections are actually available in the leaked document which is on our website as well.

MARK COLVIN: So what do they tell us that they don’t want us to know?

MARNI CORDELL: Some of the things are blocked in both documents but some of the things we were able to discover from the leaked document include quite an interesting list of they’re called abatement and incentive requirements; so where Serco is fined for poor performance and also rewarded with higher fees for good performance.

There’s also information about how often guards are required to check the internal and external perimeters of the detention centres.

MARK COLVIN: Other than just as a piece of investigative journalism, what do you hope to come out of this?

MARNI CORDELL: There’s actually a huge amount of information in these documents; there’s more than 700 pages and I would hope that other media pick up on it and really investigate what is going on and demand some more transparency about how Serco runs Australia’s immigration detention centres.

MARK COLVIN: Marni Cordell, editor of the New Matilda news website.

The following exclusive, written with Paul Farrell, appears today in Australian magazine New Matilda:

The Gillard Government’s contract with Serco imposes no initial training requirements for security guards, according to documents obtained under FOI – and that’s causing damage to asylum seekers and to the guards themselves

Serco security guards in immigration detention centres are not required to hold any formal security qualifications for six months, according to its contract with the Immigration Department (DIAC).

The contract, obtained under a Freedom of Information request, reveals that the agreement between Serco and the Immigration Department only requires security guards to “obtain a Certificate Level II in Security Operations within six months of commencement”.

A Certificate II is the minimum security requirement for unarmed security guards, and many training organisations fit the entire course into just five days.

In the recent parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s immigration detention network  this issue was raised repeatedly and DIAC officials refused to clearly answer questions about the qualifications of security guards at detention centres operated by Serco.

This is what Labor Senator Trish Crossin asked DIAC representatives:

“If you have, for example, a security guard employed by Serco at your detention centres — that is their job description — what level of qualification are they expected to have?”

A straightforward question. This was their response:

Ms [Jackie] Wilson: We would have to check that. It is a cert II or III.

Mr [Andrew] Moorhouse: There is a cert, whether it is a cert IV or a cert III in security. They are required to have the training for their particular role.

Senator Crossin: What is the minimum? What is the level of classification that each Serco person has? What is the job description and what is their base qualification?

Mr [John] Metcalfe: Essentially they are role based descriptions and qualifications appropriate for those roles. We can take that on notice.

However, New Matilda can reveal that the contract lists only two categories of guards — general security and managerial — and that general security guards are employable at the outset with no security qualifications whatsoever.

This raises serious questions about the capacity of Serco guards to manage detention centres effectively. The recent riots at Villawood Detention Centre and at Darwin Detention Centre last year highlight a growing trend of Serco staff being unable to adequately manage conflict situations.

Some guards have already blown the whistle on the consequences of the lack of training, and these reports just keep coming. The NT News recently reported that Serco staff working in Darwin’s detention centre are often taking stress leave due to their working conditions. The paper noted that the Certificate II in security operations required by staff to begin work is the same as pub bouncers. One mental health nurse told the NT News that, “we were told at our induction that (Serco workers) could have been making cappuccino or pizza the week before they started. Basically they are not trained.”

These conditions are taking their toll. We have spoken to a number of both former Serco staff and workers of its sub-contractor MSS who have detailed exposure to refugee trauma. Many of them reported developing mental health problems and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.

According to the contract, Serco must ensure that all personnel attend “mental health awareness training prior to commencing work at the facility” and “a refresher course every two years”.

However, it is not specific in its requirements that staff be properly trained for stressful situations with vulnerable asylum seekers. The recent suicides at detention centres across the country highlight the need for security officers to be trained in handling such complex, stressful situations.

During the parliamentary inquiry, DIAC officers continued to stress the induction training that Serco officers were required to undertake. However, according to the contract, this training does not involve any security specific skills:

“1.1 Induction Training

All Service Provider Personnel must have completed Induction training before they commence

duty at a Facility that includes instruction in:

(a) cultural awareness;

(b) the Immigration Detention Values;

(c) conflict de-escalation;

(d) duty of care responsibilities;

(e) communication and interaction with Department Personnel, Stakeholders and other

service providers;

(f) problem solving and decision-making in the workplace;

(g) skills on interacting with People in Detention; and

(h) record keeping procedures.”

This is a vague set of criteria for training — especially in comparison to the detail set out in other parts of the contract including, for example, an inventory of all loose assets right down to knives and forks.

NM asked DIAC about the terms of the contract relating to security guards. Why were the training requirements not more stringent — and why was the induction training so loosely described? At publication no reply has been received.

Increasing reports of violence and self harm by immigration detainees indicate that there is a growing problem in Australia detention centres. The question for Serco and DIAC is whether these problems could be mitigated with better induction training and more stringent requirements of the staff paid to work with these most vulnerable people.

The following exclusive, written with Paul Farrell, appears today in Australian magazine New Matilda:

Running detention centres is an important job. Why are the audit and reporting requirements for Serco so low? Paul Farrell and Antony Loewenstein report

Under the contract signed between Serco and the Department of Immigration (DIAC), which New Matilda has obtained under FoI, Serco is under no obligation to comply with any form of independent audit.

The financial management section of the contract does give DIAC wide ranging abilities to conduct audits of Serco’s management of detention centres but these can be conducted “by a department or its nominee” and there is no periodic requirement for this to occur.

Serco is required to be part of a “Joint Executive Report” compiled with DIAC regional management on a monthly basis that examines its management and performance. But the contract doesn’t specify how this reporting is conducted and in what capacity DIAC is involved.

Serco is required to submit monthly reports on security exercises, OH&S, emergency breakdown and repairs, illegal items, industry development, damage by people in detention and care-taker services.

Serco is also required to submit an annual report for each facility to DIAC. But the content requirements for this report are not onerous:

“Annual Report
(a) The Service Provider must submit an Annual Report for each Facility that:
(i) summarises key events during the year;
(ii) sets out the lessons learned; and
(iii) establishes targeted goals for the subsequent year.”

A recent investigation by Corpwatch reported that even though Serco receives hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from governments around the world, it has a poor track record as far as financial accountability is concerned.

NM asked DIAC why Serco is not required to comply with an independent audit in the terms of the contract, whether any audits had occurred and if so whether they were conducted by an independent organisation. At the time of publication we had not received a reply.

Serco is also required to compile “Incident Reports” to be filed with DIAC when certain events occur. The contract details three major categories of incidents: critical, major and minor. Critical incidents include death, bomb threats and suicide — but they also include “unauthorised media access” and “high profile visitor refused access”.

Curiously, this was reported several months ago as having been a later amendment to the contract but the document reveals that in fact these categories were always listed in this way and were agreed on by DIAC. These incidents need to be reported verbally within 30 minutes and in writing within four hours to DIAC.

Worryingly, some of the incidents considered “minor” include serious events that could be life-threatening. Clinical depression, substance abuse, voluntary starvation for less than 24 hours and the birth of children are only considered to be minor and only need to have a written report after 24 hours. All critical and major incidents are required to be audited but only 10 per cent of minor incidents need to be audited per month. These audits are internally conducted, and are not required to be independent.

Given there’s no independent oversight, this system relies on Serco fulfilling its reporting obligations. This, in turn, opens the possibility of incident reports simply not being filed.

During the Christmas Island leg of the recent Senate inquiry into Australia’s immigration detention network, Kaye Bernard, the General Secretary of the Union of Christmas Island Workers, told the committee hearing about an incident in which a Serco worker was stabbed — and no incident report ever reached DIAC:

Ms Bernard: The incident report was filed by the officer and when he went to get a copy of it, it had been put in bin 13. Bin 13 is commonly referred to by the detention workers as ‘the shredder’.

Mr Scott Morrison: Tell me a bit more about bin 13 then.

Ms Bernard: Bin 13 is when you have a completely overworked and understaffed facility, because of this client-detainee ratio. You have a huge reporting requirement and paperwork stacked up in boxes under the manager’s desk. It was put through a shredder.

Mr Morrison: So you are telling me that, even though an incident report was filed, to your knowledge, those incident reports are actually not reflected in the number of incident reports that may have been reported by DIAC or Serco?

Ms Bernard: Correct.

Mr Morrison: How many incidents are we talking about here? Given that there are thousands of incidents, albeit ones have been reported already, which is alarming enough, how many incidents do you think are not being reported?

Ms Bernard: If you take one incident — a riot with 200 people, one officer getting stabbed and others being injured, which was described in the media by DIAC as a tiff with unaccompanied minors — I do not know how many reports you could write up about that.

DIAC relies on incident reporting by Serco for real-time updates of what is happening in detention centres. In the absence of other real-time measures to log events, it is worrying if, as the above exchange suggests, the “Incident Management Log” is not an accurate reflection of what is happening inside detention centres.

We have spoken to a number of former Serco staff, who worked in many detention centres. They confirm that many incidents are not accurately reported — if at all — to avoid conflicts with management anger over potential financial sanctions from the federal government.

The Labor government pledged upon winning government in 2007 to implement humane and transparent policies towards asylum seekers. The lack of formal independent audit requirements make it impossible to know exactly what is happening inside immigration detention centres and to achieve the promised transparency.

The following global exclusive, written with Paul Farrell and Marni Cordell, appears today in Australian magazine New Matilda:

Today NM publishes the contract signed between the Department of Immigration and Serco, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act

New Matilda has gained exclusive access to the first publicly available version of the 2009 Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) contract with British multinational Serco.

The contract was obtained through a Freedom of Information request and reveals the most comprehensive information yet about the running of Australian detention centres.

New Matilda’s analysis of the document reveals that:

•  General security guards can begin work with no formal security qualifications and are only required to obtain a Certificate II within six months of working with Serco.

• Clinical depression, childbirth and voluntary starvation for under 24 hours are considered “minor” incidents while unauthorised media access is considered ”critical”.

• Of these “minor” incidents, only 10 per cent are required to be audited internally by Serco.

• There is no contractual requirement of an independent audit of Serco’s management of detention centres.

The first 80 pages of the contract can be downloaded here. Links to the remaining sections can be found at the end of this article.

Other issues of note include:

• Serco is obliged to provide phone services to people in detention but the contract specifies that mobile phone handsets “[must] not have a recording facility (either audio or visual)”.

• Serco must also “control and limit” detainees’ internet access to pornography, FTP sites, and “prohibited sites in foreign languages”. It is not specified which sites are prohibited and under what law.

• If a member of the public complains or provides feedback about an immigration detention centre, Serco must notify the department within one day and provide a written response to the person within two weeks, “setting out the action taken of the reason why no action will be taken”.

• Serco is obliged to provide “tea, coffee, water and biscuits” when detainees have visitors and visiting areas must contain “hot/cold drinks and confectionery vending machines”.

• Serco must “not provide access to the Facility for media visits unless the visit has been approved by the Department” and must “ensure that media personnel only conduct activities approved by the Department”.

• Serco indemnifies DIAC from and against any loss arising from or as a consequence of any “death, or bodily injury, disease or illness (including mental illness) of any person including People in Detention” — this clause survives for a period of seven years following the expiration of the contract.

According to a letter from DIAC’s FOI officer, Serco objects to DIAC’s decision to release some parts of this contract and has exercised its rights under FOI law to block access to those sections in the document marked “s27 consultation”.

View the FOI officer’s decision and a full list of the documents that were blocked by Serco here.

However, New Matilda has also obtained a leaked copy of the contract in which some of these blocked sections are visible.

This version of the contract has not been officially released, and reveals:

• The internal and external perimeter of the detention centres are only required to be checked by security guards twice a day; at the opening of the centre and before it’s locked up.

• Checks to ensure detainees are “present and safe” are only required to be conducted four times a day.

• A carrot and stick system of “abatements” and “incentives” where Serco is fined for poor performance and rewarded with higher fees for good performance

Read the leaked version of the contract here.

The fact that this contract has only been released now, more than two years after it was signed, reflects how closely guarded the agreement between Serco and the Federal Government remains.

Last week, Serco’s Australian CEO Bob McGuiness told Perth Now that he was “gobsmacked” to hear Serco described as a “secretive organisation” in the media. “I find that astonishing,” he said.

In fact, the contract prohibits Serco employees from speaking to the media at all. It reads:

“The Service Provider must not, and will ensure that its officers, employees, directors, contractors and agents do not:
Make any public statement;
Release any information to, make any statement to, deal with any inquiry from or otherwise advise the media;
Publish distribute or otherwise make available any information or material to third parties.”

The hypocrisy of McGuiness’s comments is also remarkable in light of Serco’s attempts to block access to information that the DIAC FOI decision maker has argued should be public.

The Labor government and DIAC agreed to the terms of this contract. By privatising immigration detention centres, successive Australian governments have kept these issues out of sight and out of mind, under the pretence of information being “commercial-in-confidence”. Bureaucratic buck-passing ensures little firm information is ever released.

Many parts of the contract have still not been released on the decision of DIAC’s FOI officer — including the names of the Serco directors who manage relations with DIAC and run detention centres.

Read NM’s extended coverage of the contract here and here.

Links to Serco contract (FOI version)

Volume 1, Part 1

Volume 1, Part 2

Volume 1, Part 3

Volume 1, Part 4

Volume 1, Part 5

Volume 1, Part 6

Volume 1, Part 7

Volume 2, Part 1

Volume 2, Part 2

Volume 2, Part 3

Volume 2, Part 4

Volume 2, Part 5

Volume 2, Part 6