Private prison operator to run Nauru detention centre

“People should be signing resettlement papers, not contracts"

American for-profit private prison operator Management and Training Corporation will be paid more than $90,000 per day for two months to prepare to take over the operation of the Nauru offshore immigration detention centre.

The federal department of Home Affairs awarded Management and Training Corporation (MTC) a $4.5 million contract running from early August to the end of September for “facilities, garrison and reception services” on Nauru.

It comes as MTC is widely expected to be awarded the broader, lucrative contract to take over full operation of the detention centre from Queensland company Canstruct, which has been running the centre since 2017 on a contract now worth $1.82 billion.

Canstruct’s contract runs until the end of September, meaning both it and MTC have been paid for work on Nauru at the same time over the last two months.

‘Destructive news’

There are significant concerns surrounding the recruitment of a private prison operator to run the facility, with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre calling for the refugees to be urgently evacuated from the site.

“Thousands of lives have been destroyed by the cruelty, violence and neglect that has taken place in offshore detention, overseen by a series of security companies that have received billions from the Australian public,” Human Rights Law Centre acting legal director Scott Cosgriff says.

“What they need now from the Albanese government is the chance to finally get on with their lives in safety, not another multimillion dollar contract designed to slowly crush people on a remote island.”

Ethiopian refugee Betelhem Tebubu was detained on Nauru for more than a year. She says the new contract with MTC is “shocking”.

“I was expecting good news, we were excited about this new government and now we are just getting this destructive news,” Tebubu says.

“It is very sad. I was expecting things were going to get better. I feel very sad, sad for the people held on Nauru. The conditions in Nauru are horrible - we lost our future, our dreams were stolen and now this contract.

“People should be signing resettlement papers, not contracts. It is 10 years and people are still there. They should be free, not hiring a new company.”

$4 million per refugee

There were 112 people in the Nauru detention centre as of the end of June, and no new asylum seeker has been sent to the island in the last eight years. But the cost of running the facility is still about $40 million per month, or about $4.3 million annually for a single refugee.

Despite accepting New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees from Nauru, this process has not yet begun and Australia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nauru committing to an “enduring form of offshore processing”.

MTC runs 21 prisons across the United States and is the third largest private prison company in that country. In Australia, MTC runs the Parklea prison in New South Wales in partnership with Broadspectrum.

MTC has been accused of “gross negligence” and “egregious security” failures in civil lawsuits in the US, while the NSW inspector recently found “concerning” rates of incidents” and a “deficit” in mental health services at the MTC-run Parklea prison.

Parklea is run by MTC-Broadspectrum on a $1.4 billion contract running from April 2019 to March 2026. There have been at least three significant riots at the prison in the last year, and numerous families of people incarcerated there have raised concerns about difficulties in obtaining basic medication, poor hygiene and a lack of care.

The prison was also at the centre of a significant Covid-19 outbreak last year, with questions raised over MTC-Broadspectrum’s handling of the situation.

From April 2019 to March 2021, MTC-Broadspectrum copped fines worth $2.4 million for a range of “charge events”, which can include an inmate escape and unnatural deaths.

And three MTC officers will soon face court after being charged over the alleged assault of a man held at Parklea in July.

In the US, the Mississippi attorney-general filed a suit against MTC in 2017 accusing the company, among others, of engaging in corrupt contracts with the Department of Corrections. MTC eventually had to pay $US5.2 million as part of this suit.

The company is also facing a lawsuit regarding a person held in near-solitary confinement for 14 months in an MTC-run facility.

Home Affairs also recently revealed a contract with International Health and Medical Services to provide healthcare on Naura, running until 2025. This contract is worth more than $33 million, equating to nearly $300,000 per person kept in the detention centre, or nearly $100,000 per person, per year.