Amy Ludlow

Trinity College

Does Public Procurement Deliver? A Prison Privatisation Case Study

In his foreword to the 2010 Prisons Handbook, Lord Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, describes prisons in England and Wales as dysfunctional and in crisis. The injection of neo-liberal, private sector logic has been one way in which governments since 1994 have attempted to respond and control the crisis. Private sector competition through market testing and privatisation is probably the dramatic manifestation of corporatisation in the prison sector. It certainly has enormous potential to effect employment change and impact upon industrial relations. My thesis seeks to describe and explain how, why and to what effect competition and privatisation is being used in the prison sector in England and Wales through a labour law and industrial relations lens. It combines public source data collection with an empirical case study at HMP Birmingham, the first operational public sector prison in England and Wales to be transferred into the private sector, in order to carefully and credibly describe and evaluate market testing, procurement and competition processes in our prisons against labour law and industrial relation standards and values.  

Start Date: 2009/10.

End Date: 2012/10.

2011 - 2012

Supervisor in EU Law, Jesus College and Kings College, University of Cambridge

Participant - Programme in European Private Law for Postgraduates (PEPP)

Speaker - Young Researcher European Labour Law and Social Law Conference, Austria, April 2012

Speaker - UACES Conference "Exchanging Ideas on Europe", Cambridge, September 2011

Poster presentation - European Society of Criminology Conference, Lithuania, September 2011

2010 - 2011

Participant - European Federation of Public Service Unions conference: Trade unions working for better prison services in Europe, Athens, May 2011

Poster presentation - Prisons Research Centre Steering Group Meeting, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, June 2011

2009 - 2012

PhD Candidate in Law, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

2008 - 2009

LLM (summa cum laude), Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium

• Masterpaper: "Private Ordering for Divorce - The Evolving Substantive Law on Prenuptial Agreements in Singapore and England & Wales Compared"

2005 - 2008

BA (first class), Trinity College, University of Cambridge

• Dissertation: "Linking custody, women's needs and welfare: a step in the wrong direction?"

Scholarships and Awards

• AHRC Doctoral Research Award
• Lincoln's Inn - Hardwicke Entrance Award and Lord Denning Scholarship
• Hollond Fund - Fieldwork Grant
• Yorke Fund - Fieldwork Grant
• Henry Hollond Travelling Studentship in Law
• Lizette Bentwich Prize
• Trinity College Senior Scholarship

Current Offices

• Cambridge Student Law Review Executive Board Member (2010-11), Editor (2009-10)
• Trinity Law Association - Committee Member
• Co-ordinator of Cambridge University Innocence Project
• Moot Judge
• Copy-Editor of the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of European Private Law (2011)
• Language Editor for Intersentia (2012)

UK, International and Comparative Labour Law, Industrial Relations, Human Rights, Prisons, EU Law, Empirical legal methodology.

• Book Review: S. Creighton and H Arnott, "Prisoners: Law and Practice". London: Legal Action Group (2009). The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume 49 Issue 2, (2010), 192-193.
• Case Note: "Prison privatisation in Israel: Important Transnational Lessons" Cambridge Student Law Review, Volume 6, (2010), 326-329.
• Short Article: "Exploring Contestability and Privatisation - what it means for Prison Staff" Academy for Justice Commissioning, Issue No. 13, (2011), 8-9 (http://virtual.nationalschool.gov.uk/AJC/Pages/Bulletin-Issue13.aspx).
• Thematic Interview: Prison Strikes, Respondent for England and Wales, FATIK Tijdschrift voor Strafbeleid en Gevangeniswezen, Issue No. 130, (2011), 30-32 (published in Flemish).
• Conference Paper: "Competitive Tendering in the Public Sector: How does TUPE 2006 Work in Practice?", UACES 41st Annual Conference, Exchanging Ideas on Europe, Cambridge (September 2011).
• Article: "Regulating Prison Strikes and Industrial Conflict", Prison Service Journal, Issue No. 198, (2011), 17-21.
• Book Review: A. Somek, "Engineering Equality", Oxford: Oxford University Press (2011). Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(3), (2012), 534-535.
• Conference Paper: "Competitive Tendering in the Public Sector: Is Employment Protection Illusory?", Young Researcher European Labour Law and Social Law Conference, Graz, Austria, April 2012.
• Article: "Competition & Contestability in Action: Restructuring the prison sector to achieve workforce and industrial change" (2012) 3 Public 508-526.
• Conference Paper: "Prison officer strike action: 'The mouth-watering possiblity of a high noon conflict' between the European courts?", Surrey European Law Unit Workshop, A Europe of Rights: the EU and the ECHR, Guildford (June 2012).
• Article: "Do prison custody officers have a different (legal) status to prison officers?" (forthcoming).

Catherine Barnard, Trinity College
Nicola Padfield, Fitzwilliam College
Alison Liebling, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge