THANKS to British governments copying the ugly US-plan of jail privatisation, a multinational corporation can make money out of miserable conditions on two continents.

Just before Christmas three regulators demanded “urgent action” to improve grim conditions at the privately run Rainsbrook youth jail in Warwickshire. The poor treatment of the locked-up youngsters is not surprising, given the firm running the jail: the Management and Training Corporation (MTC) are also known for some shocking conditions in private jails in their native US.

On December 18, Ofsted, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission jointly issued what they called a “rare urgent notification” obliging Tory Justice Secretary Robert Buckland to make improvements at Rainsbrook in 28 days. The three regulators said that Rainsbrook, a “secure training centre” for young offenders in Warwickshire, was a “spartan regime where children were given little encouragement to get up in the mornings or have any meaningful engagement with staff.”

Rainsbrook can hold around ninety 12-18 year old detainees, who have either been convicted of crimes or who are awaiting trial. Using Covid-19 as an excuse, staff were locking new arrivals in their bedrooms for two-week stretches, with just 30 minutes’ daily exercise time. The regulators said inspections had demanded improvements of Rainsbrook annually since 2015. The government gave US firm MTC control of Rainsbrook in 2016.

On December 17, just one day before the report on Rainsbrook, US news website BuzzFeed published excerpts from a draft report on one of MTC’s US jails, which described another miserable regime with inmates locked in solitary for ages without justification.

MTC run the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a jail which holds around 630 migrants before possible expulsion from the US.

A draft report from the US Department of Homeland Security inspectors found “serious violations regarding the administrative segregation of detainees” at MTC’s Calexico detention centre. “Administrative Segregation” means solitary confinement, and the inspectors found MTC was “using administrative segregation as a long-term solution for detainees in protective custody” instead of an exceptional move.

The inspectors found 11 immigrants had been kept in solitary confinement for more than 60 days and two others for more than 300 days. There had not been documented reviews of the isolation. Medical checks were inadequate.

The inspectors also found that MTC were not telling the truth to the government about how the inmates were treated: “Our examination of segregation records showed the facility inaccurately reported to ICE that detainees were receiving recreation time when, in fact, they were not.”

Detainees were stuck in their cells for 22 or 23 hours a day and did not get proper “group activity” when let out .

Inspectors also found mouldy vegetables and out-of-date frozen tortillas in the jail kitchen. “Such practices can lead to detainee illness from ingesting spoiled meat or rotten produce,” the inspectors wrote.

MTC told BuzzFeed they did not agree with the inspection, which was only a draft document — but when the government actually published the report later in December all the charges against the firm remained.

MTC had no real presence in Britain until 2016. Founded in Utah, 1981, it has always been dependent on government contracts — first running government-funded training services for the unemployed, then moving into prisons.

The New Labour government decided to copy the bad US policy of privatising jails. David Cameron’s Conservative governments followed suit and pushed on with more “justice” privatisations.

However, by 2015 some of the regular big names in prison privatisation had been involved in scandals, including Serco and G4S being part of a huge multi-million fraud on taxpayers. It seems the British government were keen to bring in new “competition.” They awarded MTC the contract to run Rainsbrook and a much larger contract running the newly privatised probation service in London.

It’s lucrative work. MTC’s latest accounts, covering 2018, show they had a £93m income, all from public contracts in Britain. In the US MTC have an income of around $600m (about £430m). That’s a lot of money overall — and a significant contribution from their work here.

Like other privatisers, MTC has built up links with the state: MTC hired David Hood as its British managing director. He was previously in charge of contracting out prisons and probation at the Ministry of Justice. MTC also hired other former Ministry of Justice civil servants, like Martin Blake, who went from being in charge of privatising probation to working for MTC on their private probation contract.

MTC have been found wanting ever since they got here. Rainsbrook has always had poor inspections under their management. Their private probation contract was much bigger: when probation was privatised in 2015-16, MTC were given the single biggest contract, running the service to manage recently released prisoners in the London region, worth around £500m.

MTC made many staff redundant and reduced contact between probation staff and the ex-prisoners they were supposed to guide away from crime and into jobs. The service was so poor that in 2020 the Tory government, in a rare move, renationalised the whole service.

MTC’s poor performance in Britain was very predictable, as they had already been involved in scandals in their native US. One Texas MTC jail, which housed 2,800 inmates in tents, burned to the ground in a prison riot in 2015. Others were marred by allegations of abuse and neglect.

The bigger issue is why did British politicians feel the urge to copy US policies of jail privatisation, as well as inviting US firms like MTC to run our prisons and probation? We’ve just had a graphic demonstration of how broken US politics is: probation was renationalised, to get rid of both MTC and end the privatisation experiment.

It would be a good thing if Rainsbrook was taken back in public hands for the same reason. It’s time for Britain to stop using the US model of jail privatisation.