The Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies launches its Fulbright Distinguished Speakers Series

Prison Privatization in Australia and the United States:  Differences in the Role of the State

Malcolm M. Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean’s Chair Professor of Law, Berkeley Law School

Australia, especially the States of New South Wales and Victoria, leads the world in the proportion on inmates held in private prisons.  The United States is a distant second.  Whereas privatization is taken for granted by both conservatives and liberals in Australia, in the US, it remains a highly controversial project.  Feeley examines differences in public reactions to prison privatization, differences in the quality of services and programming in public versus private prisons, and differences in the ways in which corrections officials approach privatization in the two countries.  Ultimately, he argues that success or failure of private corrections depends upon the quality of public correctional leadership.

Where:  College of Liberal Arts (CLA), Julius Glickman Conference Center, Room 1.302E

When:  Noon Wednesday, April 24.

Feeley spent six months in Australia in 2012 as Fulbright Flinders University Distinguished Chair in American Political Science.  He has written or edited over a dozen books, and has authored several dozen articles in social science journals and law reviews. Among his books are The Process is the Punishment (1992), which received the ABA's Silver Gavel Award and the American Sociology Association's Citation of Merit, Court Reform on Trial (1989), which received the ABA’s Certificate of Merit, and The Policy Dilemma (1981),Criminal Justice (with John Kaplan and Jerome Skolnick, 1991), Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State (with with Edward Rubin, 1998), Federalism: Political Identity and Tragic Compromise (with Edward Rubin, 2008), and Fighting for Political Liberalism: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex (with Terrence Halliday and Lucien Karpik, 2008).