HMP Wolds: An obituary of the vanguard of privatisation

• In Event: PWG - Prison privatisation and carceral restructuring

Abstract

Private prisons are generally accepted by both citizens and employees as a feature of the criminal justice system. However, beyond reports of higher incidences of self-harm and suicide in corporate-run prisons, this acceptance obscures the relatively recent history of prison privatisation in Europe, which began with the opening of HMP Wolds in 1991. Initially managed by the Danish corporation Group 4, HMP Wolds operated under private control for over 20 years before it was handed over to public control and merged with HMP Everthorpe to create HMP Humber. Original staff, who had been there since the beginning, either transitioned to state employment, transferred to other private prisons, or retired. As a result, the valuable knowledge they held - crucial for recounting the story of HMP Wolds and its pioneering role in prison privatisation in Europe was potentially lost. Such narratives are almost impossible to capture in an ever-changing landscape of prison reform, change and repurpose where previously forced communities are disbanded and lost.

This paper draws on eight years of experience working at HMP Wolds, from 2006 until the end of corporate control. As part of a tradition of auto-ethnography (Sparks, 2002; Jewkes, 2011) it intersects the personal with the social to revive Europe’s first private prison by examining its unique features and how it defined the regime of privatisation. It also advocates for HMP Wolds to be fully integrated into criminological literature, both as a case study of the values inherent in imprisonment and as a testament to the evolution of a prison during the dawn of privatisation.

Author

• Katy Snell, University of Hull