Please write a summary about part 5 Ethical accountability and prison profits(criticism of the private prison) and write a conclusion for the whole article. Please use paraphrasing do not copy the article. Please write about 3 pages. Thank you

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 Prisons, the prot motive and other challenges to accountability Jane Andrew The University of Wollongong, School of Accounting and Finance, Northelds Ave, NSW 2522, Australia Received 21 October 2003; received in revised form 22 June 2006; accepted 12 August 2006 Abstract It has been argued that \"accountability is the linchpin of the correctional system\" (Freiberg 1999, 120) and needs to be a central feature of any prison system. It is here that care needs to be taken. Accountability in its modern manifestation has become a largely technical and instrumental process, yet accountability for prison policies and practices has an undeniable moral component that needs to be addressed in order for public accountability to be meaningful within this domain. In Australia, accountability for private prisons has emphasised performance measures, contractual compliance and monitoring, and this has often led to poor outcomes for prisoners and the Australian community more broadly. The rise of the modern private prison brings new questions surrounding appropriate approaches to accountability, some of which will be explored in this paper. In order to consider the affect of private prisons on the Australian prison system, I have drawn on Chomsky's work on neoliberalism. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Private prisons; Procedural accountability; Accountability; Ethical accountability; Punishment; Incarceration; Privatisation; Neoliberalism; Australian prisons; Corporate corrections Prisons mean business. They are large organisations. They consist of many paid staff, bricks and mortar, beds, security devices, professional practitioners of ancillary services. They are expensive to build. They are expensive to operate. Tel.: +61 2 42214009. E-mail address: jandrew@uow.edu.au. 1045-2354/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2006.08.003 878 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 But they are easy to ll. (White, 1999, p. 243) Dostoevsky argued that a society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals. If Dostoevsky is right, and we are to judge society on this basis, information must be made publicly available in order to form a picture of our treatment of citizens we deem to be criminals.1 This picture is essential to ensure that governments, acting on behalf of society, are held accountable for decisions regarding the treatment of criminals and responses to criminal behaviour. The exchange of information becomes even more important when that information pertains to the closed and isolated environment of the prison. However, information in and of itself is not enough. We need a context in which to place that information and a framework in which to understand and debate the issues surrounding a society's decision to imprison some of its members. In this paper I argue that public accountability is central to a democratic government's ability to exercise its powers of restraint and punishment. A technical or instrumental discharge of such a responsibility is not enough, as the vulnerability of those incarcerated and the invisibility of those who manage that incarceration, inscribe a moral dimension to the accountability relationships that result. The rise of the private prison, has added to the public accountability issues within the prison sector. Although businesses have been involved in the administration of punishment throughout history, the shift to state administered punishment was heralded as a way to ensure equity, justice and humanity within the penal system (Morris and Rothman, 1995).2 Over the last 20 years this has changed signicantly with the emergence of a contemporary, private, 'for-prot' prison industry, providing diverse services, including catering, medical care, employment training, court escort services, security, and prisons for juveniles, people on remand, illegal immigrants and adult offenders. This contemporary transference of responsibility for prisons, from the public to the private sector, began in the United States 20 years ago and is now commonplace in Britain and Australia, with the latter holding about 17.8% of its incarcerated population in privately owned and/or operated prisons3 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2004; Private Prison Report International, May 2003; Roth, 2004). This transformation has also signied changes in accountability relationships between the community, the government and the private prison operator that are only beginning to be investigated. This paper will consider some of these issues, paying particular attention to the privatisation of prisons in Australia, but rst it is important to consider what I mean by accountability within this work. 1 Although it may appear that I accept the idea of the 'criminal' unproblematically, this is not the case. Criminality and its connection to race, socio-economic opportunity and gender are acknowledged, but cannot be explored in detail within this paper. 2 There is considerable historical debate about the role of private contractors in the penal system, with the period between 1840 and 1960 providing many examples of private contractors involved in a variety of correctional activities (Garland, 1990). Although this is true, 'public sector' services dominated the period. It should also be noted that the shift to public management of prisons has not necessarily led to the outcomes mentioned here. 3 This is the highest in the world on a percentage basis (Roth, 2004). J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 879 1. Accountability: its technical and moral dimensions Accountability is notoriously difcult to dene (Cousins and Sikka, 1993; Sinclair, 1995). Although few would argue against the proposition that accountability involves the giving and/or receiving of an account of an event (Mulgan, 2000), there are many who argue that this is not all that it entails (Shearer, 2002; Sinclair, 1995). Even though many accounting researchers are recognising that accountability has broader, more nebulous implications and possibilities, the more commonplace expectations do play an important role. The giving and receiving of accounts of events for which we have an interest or a responsibility has a number of important features; the account must be offered to an external source; it enables debate as the giving or receiving of an account should allow for clarication, scrutiny and revision; and it reinforces the idea that a broader social group may have rights to an account of an event for which they are not directly in control (Mulgan, 2000). One of the problems associated with this interpretation of accountability is that in order to discharge the requirement to be accountable, both the private and public sector have come to rely heavily on approaches that are technical, measurable and proceduralwhich may have the effect of limiting our expectations of what a public or private enterprise should be accountable for (Nelson, 1993; Shearer, 2002). Nelson (1993) has argued that the technical emphasis that has come to dominate our understanding of accountability, particularly within the public sector, congures it as procedural, rather than dynamic, denying its ethical inuences and dimensions. These are evidenced by the increasing reliance on performance measures (Robinson, 2003), nancial reports (Stanton, 1997), limited audit investigations (English, 2003) and political debate that centres on a statistical or numerical discussion of events (Rose, 1991). In regard to accounting, Arrington has argued that \"accounting just assumes its sovereignty over the moral, assumes its right to hold all accountable to its ridiculous telosmoney\" (1999, p. 1). Dillard and Ruchala (2005) have taken this argument further, raising the idea that a technical or hierarchical approach to accountability has enabled \"administrative evil\" in which a social actor is disconnected from the moral community through technical processes. They claim that (o)vercoming administrative evil can occur only as a reconnection of the instrumental and the moral is undertaken through a reintegration of socializing and hierarchical accountability systems. (Dillard and Ruchala, 2005, p. 619) So, although accountability has often been interpreted to be a largely procedural and technical exchange of information between interested parties that fulls a broader social, political and economic need within societies that make claims to democracyincreasingly, accountability is being recognised as a discourse (Nelson, 1993; Sinclair, 1995). Discourses of accountability play a role in constituting our beliefs about who, what and how accounts of events are to be given and received (Roberts, 1991). It is constantly being renegotiated (often unequally) and it always encompasses the possibility of challenge (Roberts, 1991). The paper represents a contribution to the challenges that are already emerging within the accounting literature to the dominance of technical and procedural dimensions of accountability over its important moral and ethical implications (Broadbent et al., 1996; Dillard and 880 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 Ruchala, 2005; Funnell, 2003; Shearer, 2002). Shearer (2002), in particular, emphasises the need to redene accountability beyond the narrow requirements of economic entities within market economies. She says that it is \"moral responsibility that grounds the accountability of the entity with respect to this community\" (p. 543) and she called for (a) discourse of human identity that is irreducibly distinct from economic man, and it must be capable of infusing our self-understanding as economic subjects with a moral obligation that exceeds our own self-interest. (Shearer, 2002, p. 569) Shearer's (2002) call for a deeper appreciation of who we are as ethical (as well as economic) beings is indicative of a growing interest in an expanded understanding of what constitutes accountability. It also suggests ways that we can avoid being trapped by an already present discourse that emphasises accountability in limited, often economic, terms and is supported by Lehman's (2005, p. 976) call for a framework that \"contextualised accountability within a substantive moral framework\". This is particularly important within the context of public accountability for privately operated prisons, as ethics and morality should not be divorced from debates about incarceration and the management of such facilities. The discussion that follows seeks to expose how the Australian government has come to dene public accountability for private prisons in limited terms, focusing largely on cost-effectiveness rather than service quality. This approach has also emphasised specic performance requirements; it has disengaged debate from the purpose and intent of incarceration; and broader issues of accountability that link a community of citizens to its responses to criminal behaviour have all but disappeared. This is the real purpose of public accountability and the provision of information that narrows this scope to such things as the number of drug tests, or the number of violent incidents within a prison distracts us from examining the deeper issues that arise from a social choice to incarcerate criminalsparticularly within the connes of privately operated, prot oriented, prisons. Within the current political climate, the discharge of this responsibility has emphasised the technical and procedural dimensions of accountability. However, even this has been hard to achieve. As will be shown, this effaces the signicant moral and ethical aspects of the accountability relationships between the private operator and the government; the government and citizens and ultimately, our society and how it treats people we deem to be 'criminal'. 2. Pushing prison privatisation In state capitalist democracies, the public arena has been extended and enriched by long and bitter popular struggle. Meanwhile concentrated private power has labored to restrict it. The conicts form a good part of modern history. The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations. (Chomsky, 1999, p. 132) J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 881 Generally, it has been argued that outsourcing and privatisation have benets that include the ability for the government to shop around for vendors in order to choose the quality and quantity of services required. It has also been suggested that outsourcing will invite competition, giving the government choices between innovative, lean, less expensive service providers (Dixon et al., 1996; Shaoul, 1997; Taylor and Warrack, 1998). There are a number of corresponding concerns, including the fact that competition may not be easily stimulated or may not suit the industry in question (for example, defence industry contractors are highly specialised and secretive, two qualities that do not suit a competitive market; and in Australia there had been three companies bidding for private prison contracts in the early stages of privatisation); there have also been many examples of bad contracts (Funnell, 2001)4 ; there is a danger of excessive dependence on a particular service provider; and perhaps most importantly, the full costs of the process are rarely calculated (for example, the cost to the community of eroding job security; the retraction of state obligations to its citizens; and the cost of reversing the decision if it turns out to be a bad one) (Gormley, 1991; Butler, 1991). Although couched in neoliberal terms, the case for private prison cost-effectiveness remains ambiguous and evidence from innumerable studies have revealed contradictory outcomes (Cooper and Williams, 2005; Kirby et al, 2000; Logan, 1990; McDonald, 1990). Most recently NSW Parliament's inquiry into the 'Value for Money for NSW Correctional Centres' (2005) found that no denitive conclusion could be drawn on the cost-effectiveness of private prisons because the uniqueness of each prison (such as size, mixture of prisoners, responsibility, programs, building design, services) does not enable a meaningful comparison. The lack of denitive information about outsourcing decisions would suggest that it cannot be separated from ideological, political, economic or ethical inuences (Chomsky, 1999; Ryan and Ward, 1989). Cooper and Williams (2005) argued nancial representations of cost savings used to initiate discussions about prison privatisation, are in and of themselves hypothetical. This hypothetical data has been used as though it is 'real' in order to legitimise the privatisation agenda and when the assumptions that underpinned the data were explored it became obvious that many alternative conclusions could be drawn. For instance, they point out that the Scottish Executive's proposal to 'cost' prison services treated the current Scottish incarceration trends as \"inexorable and failed to consider alternatives to custody\" (Cooper and Williams, 2005, p. 499). Incarceration has a variety of different public policy objectives and justications (such as deterrence, reform, incapacitation and/or classication) and imprisonment also has unintended consequences and effects a person in more ways than those anticipated by the State. Amongst other things, it means that a member of society is restrained and loses their freedom; their life path is interrupted; their family and social relations become difcult to maintain; there is a reduction in civil liberties such as privacy; they are held in places that are frequently charged with an atmosphere of distrust and violence; they are often surrounded by drugs and drug deals; and their lives often become lonely, idle and unstimulated. In this vein Davis argued that the \"prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have 4 Funnell (2001) outlines an example in the United States where attempts to specify the requirements of a loaf of bread led to the production of a 20-page document. 882 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 led to spiralling numbers of prisoners\" (1998). This places an inescapable moral responsibility on society to ensure that there are clear objectives associated with incarceration; that imprisonment meets these broader social objectives; and that prisons operate in a socially acceptable manner. Fundamentally, a society holds a 'criminal' accountable for their actions and that person has a corresponding right to an accountable execution of the objectives of their sentence. This is predicated on the assumption that all of these can be negotiated meaningfully and democratically. It is also complicated by the fact that some private entities can now prot from incarceration and that these entities have a vested interest in the maintenance, if not the expansion of incarceration as a response to criminal behaviour. It has led some to ask whether there are \"services that are \"inherently governmental\" and should thus be quarantined from the process [of contracting out]?\" (Schoombee, 1997, p. 141). This has raised discussion about how to recongure accountability within this context (Dillard and Ruchala, 2005; Funnell, 2003). Not only are the public policy objectives diverse, but also the level of privatisation varies considerably. As many peripheral services that are integral to the operation of a public prison are now purchased from private contactors, including employment advice/training, garbage collection, energy and water/sewerage services, boundaries between the public and the private sector are blurred. This complicates accountability arrangements and makes it more difcult to justify the place of the public sector within such an environment, a situation that has been capitalised on by private operators who argue they are just providing cheaper services, whilst distancing themselves from the signicance of those services to the community. This is a point presented by many scholars in the eld, such as Harding who has argued that (t)he key point, whatever degree or model of privatisation is adopted, is that the allocation of punishment should remain with the state apparatus, whilst the day to day administration of that punishment is devolved to the contract managers (1992, p. 2). Harding's (1992) point of view would suggest that a clear distinction between sentencing and the administration of that sentence could be drawn. Such a distinction is not necessarily as easy or as desirable as this suggests. As the State has the power to deprive a person of their liberty, it is critical the administration of that sentence is subject to an appropriate standard of care, that human rights are observed and the actions of those vested with the control over the detainees should be closely scrutinised and monitored. The further this task moves away from the State the more difcult it is to monitor and the State has more opportunity to retreat from its responsibility to ensure such conditions. Moyle has argued \"(i)t should be emphasised that prison regimes, and the powers exercised by those who manage them, involve a continuation of sovereign power\" (1999, p. 154) and that there is a need to identify the \"the powers that may not be delegatable within a democracy\" (1999, p. 155). The delegation of these powers may well be strategic, providing benets to both the state and the private sector. Chomsky (1996, 1999) has argued that the current capitalist order undermines democracy, and within this context public debate has diminished. This is a view that is supported by Munck (2005, p. 65) when he wrote that it \"is government intervention in economic life that threatens freedom, according to the neoliberal theorists\". As corporations gain control of more and more of the institutions and services traditionally maintained by J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 883 government (such as prisons), private power has been enhanced. As such, formal electoral democracy helps to maintain the illusion of democracy, and that the \"population has been diverted from the information and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making\" (McChesney, 1998, p. 9). As McChesney wrote (n)eoliberalism5 is the dening political economic paradigm of our timeit refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximise their personal prot. (McChesney,1998, p. 7) This has often been characterised as a logical and appropriate response to governments who have been painted as \"incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic\" (McChesney, 1998, p. 7). On the other hand the free market is assumed to \"encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative\" (McChesney, 1998, p. 7) even though there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. Contrary to the rhetoric of neoliberalism, Chomsky (1999) points out that governments have not reduced in size, and there is little evidence to suggest that privatised public assets have increased in efciency and/or quality. The ideology that underpins neoliberalism has contributed to the rise of private prisons, and with this privatisation a number of questions need to be raised about the nature, appropriateness and maintenance of public accountability within a prison system that is increasingly prot oriented. Investigations such as this one, need to be placed within the context of neoliberalism, in order to shed light on the ways that we organise our societies and to problematise the privatisation of prisons on both technical and moral grounds (see Russell, 1997). This argument hinges on the idea that 'neoliberal' governments serve the interests of capital and its impulse to continually accumulate, whilst enabling a retreat from any substantive public accountability. As Puxty (1997) has argued, when capitalism is in crisis, capital needs to expand into new areas, which may lead to a changed role of the state as it releases areas it has traditionally controlled to the private sector and \"capitalism tries to turn all relationships into a commercial exchange\" (Hutton and Giddens, 2001, p. 17). In this vein, private prisons serve both the interests of government and private enterprise. Private prisons may help disguise the impact of global capitalism on people (through job losses, failure to provide productive work and 'imprisoning' the products of political and economic alienation), it appears to shift the responsibility for prisons to the private sector and it enables private interests to prot in a new way. As a result it diminishes the public sphere, and changes the nature of public accountability (Chomsky, 1999; Funnell, 2003). In support of this Chomsky wrote that (d)emocracy is under attack worldwide, including the leading industrial countries; at least, democracy in a meaningful sense of the term, involving opportunities for people to manage their own collective and individual affairs. Something similar is true of markets. The assaults on democracy and markets are furthermore related. Their roots lie in the power of corporate entities that are increasingly interlinked and reliant on powerful states, and largely unaccountable to the public (1999, p. 92). 5 However, according to Chomsky (1999) it is \"not new\" and it is \"not liberal\". 884 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 The changing relationships between the private and the public sector referred to by Chomsky (1999) have impacted signicantly on discourses of accountability. The current arrangements for incarceration in Australia testify to this. It is now possible that a private, for prot, company to be accountable to the government for the delivery of prison services and facilities and the government is then accountable to the public (including prisoners) for the delivery of these servicesin so doing, distance is placed between the service provider and the community in a way that would present signicant challenges to fullling any technical, let alone moral, accountability function. In an attempt to address this, or further reinforce it, private prison operators present largely technical accounts of events and are accountable for the delivery of certain services at a certain quality against performance indicators (Robinson, 2003); the government is able to report on these in a relatively objective manner and also distance themselves from direct responsibility; and at the same time, questions about the ethical and moral responsibility of government and society to these citizens is almost entirely eradicated from debate. Before proceeding, it is important to note that there is a problem with framing the debate within the private/public sector dichotomy, and considering accountability issues within this framework, as it can often fail to investigate the 'subject' that is being debated (Cooper and Williams, 2005). This is in itself an emasculated view of accountability, because it does not consider critically what to do in circumstances in which both the private and the public sector have failed to provide a solution to the crisis of the current prison system. This delineates the debate within the parameters of who should provide the prison, rather than whether the prison is a solution to the social issues that our societies face. This may make it easier to ignore and silence debate about the denitions and causes of criminal behaviour, such as social alienation, economic inequity and institutionalised discrimination. As accountability plays an important role in our ability to make decisions, the nature of the information is vital. It should not be limited to information that allows us to compare the public to the private sector on the basis of cost, but rather it should enable an investigation into the purpose and possibilities of addressing the social issues that lead to crime and not just what we do with 'the criminal' afterwards. 3. Private prisons in Australia (A) private corporation is not in the business of being humanitarian. It's in the business of increasing prot and market share. Doing that typically is extremely harmful to the general population. It may make some number look good. (Chomsky, 1996, p. 122) Since 1988, the private sector has played an expanding role in the operation of Australia's correctional facilities. This was sparked by the Kennedy Report (1988) for the Queensland Corrective Services Commission into correctional reform recommended that a private operator under contract to the Commission should develop one prison. This was based on its ndings that problems within the existing system could be solved through privatisation, including stafng difculties, creating a market for corrective institutions, increased exibility in correctional arrangements, and developing competition in order to have something to test performance and costs against. This argument had been presented in J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 885 other countries previously, and it is widely accepted within the literature on private prisons that the fundamental motivations of prison privatisation have been the belief that private prisons will reduce operating costs (largely through reduced labour costs), provide faster and cheaper prison capacity (limited barriers to nancing and construction) and that they should improve the quality of the service (through innovation) (Calabrese, 1993; Logan, 1990; Shichor, 1995). Although these arguments have been presented as neutral representations of the issues, the arguments are not sterile or politically neutral. Ideological assumptions underpinned the Kennedy Report, including the appeal to 'the market' to solve persistent failures within the prison sector; the representation of the unionised workforce as 'difcult' and 'problematic', in part because of their refusal to accept further compromised work conditions; the appeal to 'exibility' as though this will have no affect on quality or performance and that this exibility does not come at a cost (such as people's jobs or job security, working hours and so on); and the presumption that competition will enable performance to be measured more accurately on the basis of cost, which may have scaled back attempts to develop other ways of critiquing and improving punishment and prison services (Chan, 1994; Moyle, 1999). This would suggest that the decision to privatise prisons was not one based purely on technical information; rather, it was a highly politicised move surrounding a need to disassociate the government from the prevailing problems within prisons. Although these motivations were raised within the media and there was some public debate over the government's approach, the report was accepted. This led the Commission to call for tenders to manage and operate Borallon Correctional Centre, which was a 240-bed medium security prison near Brisbane. Corrections Corporation Australia (CCA) was awarded this contract in 1989, and under this 3-year contract, the rst private prison in Australia was opened in 1991 at a cost of $ 22 million to build, and a contract fee of $ 9.7 million for the 1991 nancial year (Harding, 1992). This contract was awarded partly as a result of the lobbying efforts of Senior Executives from CCA who travelled around Australia in 1989 'informing' State governments of the benets of private prisons (Gow and Williamson, 1998). Subsequently contracts have been awarded to private prison operators throughout the country and today Australia has seven privately operated adult prisons operating in ve states. These are run by three companies, all of which are foreign ownedAustralian Integrated Management Services (a wholly owned subsidiary of the US company Sodexho Alliance), GEO Group (previously known as Australian Correctional Management), Management and Training Corporation (whose corporate headquarters are in Utah) and GSL Custodial Services (formerly Group 4 Falck). Information about each of these prisons is presented in Table 1. From the Kennedy Report onwards, the possibility that private companies could play a role in the provision of correctional institutions throughout Australia was rmly entrenched. Running a prison brings with it signicant responsibilities. The foremost of these responsibilities is prisoner health, safety and dignity, all of which are prioritised under the Standard Guidelines for Corrections in Australia 1996 and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners. Public prisons are notoriously bad at providing safe and dignied conditions for their inmates, which has meant that arguments suggesting that public prisons are more able to meet these qualitative outcomes than private prisons have been difcult to 886 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 Table 1 Private prisons in Australia, 2003 State Name Security level Size Private operator Western Australia Queensland Acacia Arthur Gorrie 750 710 AIMS ACM Queensland Victoria Borallon Fulham Medium (male) Max/med/min (reception and remand) Max/med Med/min 492 777 Victoria Port Phillip Max 710 NSW South Australia Victoria Junee Mt Gambier Metro Women's Med/min Med/min Max/med/min 600 110 125 MTC ACM (GEO Group Australia) Group 4 (GSL Custodial Services) ACM Group 4 CCA (1996-2000) Data provided by the Australian Institute for Criminology. mount. However, there is signicant evidence that suggests the pursuit of prot has exaggerated the erosion of the quality of services and conditions being provided to prisoners and the community as a whole. A study conducted by Biles and Dalton found that Port Phillip prison, Deer Park and Arthur Gorrie all have higher rates for all deaths and suicides than the Australian average (1999, p. 4). Although some of the ndings of Biles and Dalton (1999) are alarming, the reports signicance does not just lie in what it reveals about the performance of these prisons. Its signicance also lies in what it reveals about the inability for a community to affect change, express outrage, demand greater scrutiny and ensure better outcomes for their community and the prison system as a whole. As prison institutions have struggled to maintain legitimacy as a form of punishment that has positive outcomes for the 'punished' and society in general, the introduction of the prot motive into this arena raises further concern (Cavise, 1998). Cavise has argued that (w)ith private control, there is a danger that prisoners, traditionally among society's most neglected members, will suffer abuse and exploitation for prot (1998, p. 22). It certainly makes the relationship between the community and the service provider one that is dependent on the community's ability to monitor and access information about prisons. In the words of Harding: The question of effective accountability thus becomes central. (Harding, 1992, p. 2) Much of the literature concerning the debate over the contracting out of government services suggests that accountability can be ensured through a carefully constructed contract and appropriate monitoring arrangements (Harding, 1992; McDonald, 1994; Steane and Walker, 2000). This presents a very technical face of accountability, which is not unusual within the context of societies that privilege technical approaches to social negotiations and is closely linked to a neoliberal framework (Bryan, 2000). Although there is a technical dimension to accountability this is often given a disproportionate representation within J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 887 the literature and may have the affect of constructing rather than representing, notions of accountability \"by rendering selectively visible, relations of accountability\" (Power, 1991, p. 38). Steane and Walker have argued that the dominant discourses in which this view of accountability is placed, \"concerns the application of economic logic to issues previously within the domain of political scientists and public policy theorists\" (2000, p. 248; Chomsky, 1999). This is indicative of the systemic divorce of economic and social policy, as though one can be justied through the other, rather than equally important components of social organisation. At the least, the accountability process should reveal whether the contracted private operator is fullling its contract and providing the service that has been agreed upon, but according to Bates (a)fter 15 years of privatization, ofcials still have almost no reliable data to assess whether for prot prisons are doing their jobor living up to their promise to save taxpayers money (1999, p. 22). In order to unravel some of the issues surrounding the public accountability of private prisons, the remainder of this paper will look at both its procedural and ethical manifestations discussed in an earlier section, illustrating how inadequate the current arrangements have been in achieving either. It should be noted that any attempt to deal with the procedural and the ethical dimensions of accountability separately presents problems. The failings of technical accountability enable discussion of the importance the ethical dimensions of accountability. Inevitably, these discussions are intertwined. 4. Procedural accountability and prison prots The term 'accountability' is used in this context to mean more a 'technical' than a 'moral' responsibility and it is considered to be an objective and measurable concept rather than a subjective one. (Shichor, 1998, p. 90) Although it is increasingly accepted that accountability has a moral and ethical dimension (Burritt and Lehman, 1995; English, 2003; Hill et al., 2001; Shearer, 2002; Shichor, 1998; Sinclair, 1995), even its technical components are difcult to ensure. When applied to private prisons, ensuring even the most basic, commonplace forms of accountability has been problematic. There have been difculties ensuring access to quality information; it has been hard to ensure nancial accountability because of the ways that contract fees have been structured; it has been difcult to monitor contract performance; and the processes of contract awarding, renewal and termination have presented difculties that undermine the ability of the community to ensure public accountability. 4.1. Access to quality information If accountability is central to the concept of responsible government and knowledge of the activities of government is central to the exercise of a citizen's control over 888 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 government then it is clear that the doctrine of commercial condentiality can operate as a barrier to the availability of information. (Freiberg, 1999, p. 121) For the procedural functions of accountability to be satised there must be access to information that facilitates necessary scrutiny. This is essential in order to ensure that social institutions are constantly under review and challenged to improve the quality of their services. Along with the important dimension of access is the need for quality information that gives detailed, accurate, comparable dataa mission that most accountants are fully aware of. Unfortunately, in the case of prison privatisation this access has been hindered by a number of things, namely the government's ability to deem certain information 'commercial in condence'; the information has often been technical and has not necessarily provided signicant insight; often the information has not been reported in a timely manner; and some sources of information (such as prisoners) have been harder to access under privatisation. In Australia, many core documents relating to prison privatisation have been held back from public scrutiny under the guise of 'commercial condentiality', stalling many attempts to scrutinise the operations of both state and private prisons because of a \"lack of access to what seemed to be key documentation\" (Funnell, 2003; Harding, 1998, p. 5). This is a position supported by Gow and Williamson (1998) in there analysis of Australia's historical development from a penal colony to what they describe as a 'corporate colony' in which public access to information is secondary to a corporations desire for secrecy. Although some information about private prisons has been made available through Freedom of Information6 claims, this is costly, time consuming and often vital information is censored before release. The other main source of public information on privately managed prisons has been provided through audit reports of the prisons, and ofcial investigations into prison operations such as the State Government of Victoria's Audit Review of Government Contracts (2000); the annual Productivity Commissions Report on Government Services; and specially commissioned reports such as the Victorian Correctional Service's Report on the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre's Compliance with Contractual Obligations and Prison Services Agreement (Armytage, 2000) and the Report of the Independent Investigation into the Management and Operations of Victoria's Private Prisons (Kirby et al., 2000). Although these have value, they are limited and constrained by the framework in which they operate and often reinforce the current arrangements. The scopes of these investigations are often limited and most have focused on efciency improvements, nancial expenditures and performance against set measures. Appraisals that adopt a broader evaluative stance are not commonplace and are more likely the result of investigative journalism than any ofcially sanctioned system of accountability. A second issue that inhibits the ability to ensure effective accountability in this environment relates to the quality of that information. Information about the quality of the services has often been limited to that which is easily counted, such as the number of escape attempts, positive drug tests or 'incidents'. Audit reports and special reports commissioned by State 6 Under the Freedom of Information Act, you may be denied right of access to information where, there is a legitimate need for condentiality or where another person's privacy may be invaded. Under the legislation the business affairs of another person or business are often exempt from claims under the Act. J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 889 Government's into the activities of private prisons, like those mentioned previously, have also focused on these issues. These have considerable problems because of the ability to manipulate the data. It is also questionable whether this data can shed light on the quality of the service being provided, and whether it provides enough information on which to evaluate and review approaches to justice and punishment. Unfortunately, a strict liberal framework may \"perpetuate the status quo by simply providing additional information to stakeholders without critically investigating\" (Lehman, 1999, p. 218) the issues that are in question. It is here that this technical mutation of accountability becomes problematic because it is potentially constructing, by virtue of rendering selectively visible, relationship of accountability; an inversion of the traditional view of the sources of accountability. (Power, 1991, p. 39) The problems associated with access to information were highlighted in the Correctional Services Commissioner's Report on the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre's (MWCC) (Armytage, 2000) compliance with its contractual obligations and prison services agreement. A lot of the issues raised here were not visible in the reports required under the contract and were only made apparent through detailed investigations and not through the standard accountability arrangements. By way of a specic example, the contract requires that the prison operator report drug related incidents to the Commissioner. The contract also required that no more than 8.26% of prisoners test positive for non-prescribed drug use, as a result of random testing (Contract for the Management of Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre, 1995, p. 171). This accounted for 20% of the Corrections Corporation Australia's (CCA) performance related fee (Armytage, 2000). Should this target be breached then the fee would be reduced by the proportion established within the contract. Ideally, the emphasis placed on these kinds of performance outcomes should improve the performance of the service. However, the emphasis can also mean that steps are taken to ensure that the outcomes are met 'technically' without actually improving performance. For instance, the Commissioner's investigation into the MWCC found that for the last 3 months, prisoner 'E' has been tested on 13 occasions between 4.00 am and 5.20 am. The MWCC Manager Health Services has advised OCSC there is no medical reason as to why prisoner 'E' has to be tested at these times. The testing of prisoner 'E' at these times is of signicant concern as the predictability of testing enables the prisoner to use drugs with a decreased likelihood of being detected. (Armytage, 2000, p. 16) This is an example of how the measurement criteria can be manipulated in order to meet contractual requirements. Such distortions of 'success' are inevitable when the criteria for measurement are as limited as the number of positive drug tests, and that these criteria are contingent on the continuity of the contract and the nancial viability of the private contractor. Many of the issues that led to default notices being issued to the contractor related to the management decision not to report required information in a timely manner. As any meaningful system of accountability requires the exchange of information, these breaches undermine the ability of the government to ensure the private contractor is held accountable and also undermines the ability of the public to hold the government accountable 890 J. Andrew / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18 (2007) 877-904 for its actions. The Auditor General of Victoria's Report on Ministerial Portfolio's (2001) identied a number of key issues that related to Victoria's private prisons operators failing to report information. They found that signicant incidents were not \"immediately reported\" (2001, s.3.4.39) and many incidents were \"not declared at the earliest opportunity\" (2001, s.3.4.40), undermining the most basic dimension of accountability. Although some audit reports and special investigations into private prisons have provided insight into the management of the private prisons, this has been limited by a number of factors that are unique to the new private arrangements. For instance, traditionally, prisoners have been a good source of information about what is actually occurring within a prison and their access to people outside the prison has played an important accountability function (Maguire et al., 1985). According to Gow and Williamson (1998), in Victoria private prison regulation has ensured the censoring and silencing of prisoners, wherein prisoners have to pre-record eight phone numbers, calling the media is banned and all phone calls are recorded. This has meant that there has been a decrease in the amount of information about what happens inside prisons from the point of view of the actual prisoners. The report into MWCC (Armytage, 2000) found similar problems, with inadequate stafng leading to long lockdown periods, which make it impossible for prisoners to access telephones or meet with family and friends. This draws into question the argument that more exible stafng arrangements made possible through private prison operators are actually lead to more successful prisons. In order for basic accountability this to be satised access to information needs to be ensured, and in a prot-oriented environment, this may be even harder to guarantee. Rather than ensuring that private contractors perform well, these examples suggest that there is a large incentive to ensure that the private contractor appears to be performing well. As Shichor has argued, evaluating private prison performance is hard because \"of the paucity of benchmark data to forecast future developments\