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Source: ONE News -
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Labour says the government is going to repeat a "failed and costly experiment" when it puts Mt Eden-Auckland Central Remand Prison under private management.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins says Cabinet had chosen the prison for private management and the successful tenderer would be announced by the end of the year.
She said it was under private management between 1999 and 2005, when the previous Labour government ended the contract on "ideological grounds".
Labour's law and order spokesman, Clayton Cosgrove, said last night it was National Party ideology that was driving prison privatisation.
"It is National's mantra that what is private must work better than something run by government employees - no matter what the evidence says," he said.
"It is a huge insult to Corrections staff and management to imply that they cannot implement new approaches and innovations that proved effective overseas."
Collins says private management was an opportunity to inject new ideas and innovations into the sector to enhance public safety, improve rehabilitation and lower costs.
Cosgrove disputed the cost factor.
"The last time this happened, when National let a private contract to an Australian company to run Auckland Remand Prison, it cost more per prisoner - $43,000 - than the Corrections Department's own operating costs for remand prisoners of $36,000 per inmate," he says.
