ABSTRACT
Judicial accountability is greater in the private than the public sector. With regard to administrative mechanisms of accountability, there are numerous ones applicable to the public prison system. Charles Thomas has argued that private sector vulnerability to litigation actually exceeds that of the public sector. The defining characteristic of the administrative accountability mechanisms is that they are governmentally created, partly external, to a degree autonomous, and designed to operate as ongoing safety valves in relation to 'normal' or non-emergency problems. When comparing the accountability of the public and private sectors of the prison industry, there are three main possibilities: that public prisons are more accountable; that private and public systems are equally accountable; and that private prisons are more accountable. The relevance of the foregoing discussion is that boards possess exactly the same role in relation to private as to public prisons. There is no equivalent arrangement in relation to any of the state's 24 public sector prisons.
