A piece in The Guardian about the state of the privately run centres for the detention of asylum seekers.

Nobody, besides Home Office officials, ministers and the companies
themselves, knows what profits are made out of locking up asylum
seekers.
…
But what has come out under FoI are Home Office figures for self-harm
and suicide in immigration detention for the 10 months up to the end of
January 2006: 185 people had "attempted self-harm, requiring medical
treatment" (how many were attempted suicides isn’t known) and 1,467
were put on self-harm watch. Research by Medical Justice suggests the
numbers could be higher: of 56 "failed" asylum seekers in four
detention centres whom the group examined, 33 showed evidence of
post-traumatic stress disorder or depression; many had harmed
themselves or made suicide attempts; and nearly half had been tortured.
…
It’s our money that is spent on this barbarism, a barbarism most of us
are happy to ignore while private companies fill their coffers.

I know very little about this subject (yes, thank you the gentleman at the back with the ‘ What’s New?’ comment) but there’s something I’m hoping someone can tell me. As you can see, there’s a certain amount of demonisation of the fact that companies are, gasp!, making profits out of this situation. That the centres are foul, that there are frightened and oppressed people in them, that there are suicides and so on I don’t doubt for a moment. But how much of that is due to the law (what the State insists must be done) and how much of it is down to private, profit seeking, companies being employed to do it?

Do we actually have any State run detention centres? Can we compare the rates of the bad things bwtween privately and State run ones? If not, is there any other State run institution we can compare them with?

The article is, as far as I can see, saying that bad things are happening and that someone’s making a profit. I don’t doubt that both are true. What I’d like to know though is whether bad things also happen when someone isn’t making a profit out of the same situation? Thus, is it the situation or the profit seeking that is the problem?