ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the range of attitudes surrounding the policy implications of privatisation within the Criminal Justice System. It addresses the moves towards the privatisation of prisons in America and Britain. Perhaps the most controversial of issues surrounding the implementation of privatisation in the Criminal Justice System is that which concerns the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen and the functions which the state carries out on behalf of its citizens. Although the idea of privatisation in the United Kingdom is certainly not new, for Britain in the post-war period, it had become the norm for the state to be seen as the natural provider of services like health, education and the Criminal Justice System. Perhaps the most compelling argument for prison privatisation is therefore the humanitarian one. Glowing reports of the American experience led the British government in the 1980s seriously to consider the introduction of private prisons in the United Kingdom.
