UK Detention Services
UK Detention Services Ltd (UKDS) was set up in 1987 as a joint venture between the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and the construction firms Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons Ltd and John Mowlem & Co. Both Sir Robert McAlpine and Mowlem were regular corporate donors to the Conservative party. UKDS has run prisons and immigration detention centres in Britain.
Lobbying history
In 1986, the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee examined prisons in England and Wales, and made a trip to the US. The Committee visited two jails there run by CCA. This experience spurred the Committee to recommend that “the Home Office should, as an experiment, enable private sector companies to tender for the construction and management of custodial institutions.”
UKDS lobbied the British government to privatise prisons, signing a memorandum in January 1988 agreeing to “promote the design, financing, construction and management by private contractors of prisons and remand facilities in the United Kingdom”.
Sodexho takeover
In 1996, CCA took total ownership of UKDS, and immediately sold a 50% share to French multi-national Sodexho. In September 2000, Sodexho bought CCA's share of UKDS.[1]
Harmondsworth immigration detention centre
UKDS was awarded an eight year contract to run Harmondsworth IRC in 2000, and commenced operating the detention centre in September 2001.[2]
Notes
- ↑ Stephen Nathan, Prison Privatization in the United Kingdom, Capitalist Punishment, Zed Books, 2003, pp162-167
- ↑ 'Memorandum submitted by UK Detention Services', Parliamentary Select Committee on Home Affairs, January 2003
