A special nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, has issued a restraining order preventing Israel’s first private prison from beginning operation. The ruling has profound legal, social and philosophical ramifications.



Legal petitions against the privatization of Israel’s prisons were submitted four years ago by a prisoner named Yadin Machnes, a lawyer by profession, as well as the heads of the Civil Rights Department in the Law Academic College of Ramat Gan and former Israel Prison Service official Shlomo Tauser.

The already-built facility, just south of Be’er Sheva, was to open its doors as early as next month, holding 800 low-to-medium security prisoners serving up to seven years in jail. It is owned by ALA Management and Operations, which won the government tender to run Israel’s first private jail.

ALA is a subsidiary of three companies: Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel, an Israeli construction company, and Emerald Corrections, a Louisiana-based company that operates several private detention centers in Texas.

Petitioners: Privatization of Police and Army Next?

The petitioners claimed that Israeli legal principles and Basic Laws forbid the transfer to a private, commercial body of sovereign powers such as the use of force to incarcerate individuals. Privatization of jails could “lead to the privatization of the police, army and legal system,” the petitioner maintained, “causing a mortal blow to democratic life in Israel.”

The State – backed specifically by the Finance and Public Security Ministries – claimed that the new prison would be a “unique, responsible and supervised model,” and that prisoners’ rights would be at the top of its agenda. A major objective of the State is to save money in prison management, though whether it would actually do so, especially in the long run, is now up for debate.

The Supreme Court judges noted that the fact that the new jail has already been built is the company’s problem. They noted that they had issued a previous restraining order in June 2006, well before the facility was completed, making it clear to all that the legality of the private jail’s operation was in doubt.

Arguments Against Privatization

Attorney Aviv Wasserman of Ramat Gan, one of the petitioners, has summed up several of the arguments against private prisons. They include the following:

  • Enforcing the denial of an individual’s freedom of mobility should be done not by a private, commercial body, but only by the State.
  • The most common way for a private body to save money in running a prison is to cut back on guards’ salaries. This is not only unfair to the guards, but also leads to heavy turnover in manpower, a drop in quality of training and functioning, and a corresponding rise in incidents of violence and smuggling in comparison with public jails.
  • Other methods of saving money also come at the expense of the prisoner, including reductions in rehabilitation, education, prisoner welfare, and the like. In addition, money for work performed by the prisoners goes mostly to the private company, as opposed to the situation in public jails, where the profits are directed to funds used for the prisoners’ welfare.
  • Transferring control of jails to private owners leads the latter to lobby for more prisoners. This partially explains the dramatic rise in prisoners in the United States - nearly ten-fold - over the past 25 years. Lobbyists push for the Three Strikes You’re Out policy (meaning that one who is convicted of three felonies receives an automatic 25-year sentence), as well as for the abolition of Youth Courts.