G4S PLC

G4S has been an important ‘outsourcing partner’ for the government, covering a wide range of services including military, justice, police and welfare. The company has been managing five prisons, two immigration removal centers, accommodations for asylum seekers and hundreds of court and police cells throughout the country, as well as providing border security and electronic monitoring to about 20,000 people on probation or bail.

A series of public fiascos in recent years have cost the company some of its major contracts. These included the 2010-2012 investigation into the death of Jimmy Mubenga at the hands of G4S guards during his deportation, leading to the loss of deportation contracts; accusations of improper management of a number of prisons, including health care provision, suicide prevention and human rights protection at Wolds prison, costing the company that contract; the company’s failure to provide security to the 2012 Olympics; and the 2013 exposure of a consistent fraudulent overcharging for electronic tagging services by false claims (at times charging the government for dead prisoners or prisoners out of the country). In January 2016, staff members of a G4S managed youth offenders centre in Kent were accused of physical and emotional abuse against several teenagers.  

On March 9th, 2016, the firm announced that would sell off its U.K. Utility Services and Children Services business, as well as its U.S. Youth Justice Services and the G4S Israel subsidiary within 12-24 months. If followed through, this sale will end G4S' juvenile detention work in the U.S. and the U.K. This announcement came a few weeks after allegations of abuse in G4S-operated youth jail facilities. 

G4S Secure Solutions inc. (formerly the Wackenhut Corporation) is the U.S. arm of the company, with 20% of its global revenues. Its primary business in the US is providing private security to government buildings, nuclear facilities, banks, and special events. G4S also provides security systems and technology for prisons and private security corporations, such as alarm systems, key holding, and video cameras.

G4S runs youth detention facilities across the U.S., including in Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas and Florida. These are run by G4S Youth Services, headquartered in Tampa, Florida. The majority of these facilities (28) are in Florida (see a list of highlighted facilities here and a list of facilities in Florida here). The company contracts with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to operate juvenile detention programs (“academies”), probation services, residential facilities, mental health and outpatient services, and even “maximum-risk” correctional centers. In Florida there have been consistent reports of sexual abuse, use of excessive force, recurring riots, and numerous resulting lawsuits against the company.

On March 9th, 2016, the firm announced that it would sell off its its U.S. Youth Justice Services as well as its U.K. Utility Services and Children Services business and the G4S Israel subsidiary within 12-24 months. If followed through, this sale will end G4S' juvenile detention work in the U.S. and the U.K.

Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection has outsourced all transportation services to G4S since 2006. G4S transports detainees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities throughout the country, temporarily detains them to await processing and forcibly deports them across the U.S./Mexico border. An official promotional brochure by the company was titled “The Bus No One Wants to Catch – The End of the Road for Illegal Immigrants.”

From 2010 through 2013, G4S Secure Solutions has spent $110,000 lobbying the U.S. House of Representatives and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), focusing on issues relating to border security and “liability,” as well as issues pertaining to service procurement by the Customs and Border Protection agency. In 2014, the company was made to sell its U.S. Government Solutions division, after charges of complicity in human rights violations in the Guantánamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.

In South Africa, the company has extensive business, including the ownership and operation of the second largest private prison in the world, Mangaung Correctional Centre, a maximum-security facility which accommodates 3,000 inmates. In 2013, after G4S dismissed 330 guards who went on strike, there was a series of inmate revolts and hostage taking, resulting in the temporary taking over of the prison back by the state’s Department of Correctional Services.

During that time, a year-long investigation has uncovered a practice of G4S security teams using electric shocks and forcibly administering injections of antipsychotic drugs to subdue inmates. The prison was returned to G4S management, but a continued public investigation has exposed a cover-up of several prisoner deaths following such torture and prompted a suit by 43 prisoners against the company for torture.

On its website, G4S boasts of “corporate responsibility” through the practice of donating to the community the fruits of prison labor in Mangaung.  

G4S has been implicated in labor rights violations in several of its global sites. Official complaints under OECD guidelines from G4S sites in Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa (and others) including testimonies of racial segregation and poverty wages, led to a G4S commitment to workers’ rights in 2008, but despite this, in the following years G4S was implicated in labour rights abuses in Uganda, South Korea, and South Africa.

The company offers security services to facilities, for example to platinum mines in South Africa, specifically to counter “Labor Unrest,” including riot control, undercover operations, intelligence gathering and canine support.

In 2016, G4S sold its Israeli subsidiary to FIMI Opportunity Fund, an Israeli private equity firm. However, G4S still retains its stake in the Policity corporation, which built and now operates the new Israeli National Police Academy near the city of Beit Shemesh. In 2010, G4S and Shikun & Binui formed Policity to jointly bid on the contract to build and operate the Academy, which consolidated all of Israel's police training facilities. Israel plans to use the Academy in the future to train some of its other security forces, such as the Israeli Prison Service and Border Police. The National Police Academy opened in 2015, and Policity has a contratct to expand it and operate it at least until 2035.

 

The rest of activities described below are of G4S Israel (formerly Hashmira), which is owned by FIMI and can no longer be attributed to the UK-based multinational G4S.

G4S Israel (formerly Hashmira) is one of the major security systems and services providers to all branches of the Israeli government, including to the Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Armored Corps base of Nachshonim, and buildings and equipment of the security and finance industries. Its security patrol units, the company states, are manned by "warriors who graduated elite combat units in the Israeli army". G4S and 3M together supply all electronic monitoring systems to prisoners in Israel.

G4S Israel has provided equipment for Israeli-run checkpoints and terminals in the West Bank and Gaza, including luggage scanning machines and full body scanners by Rapiscan and L-3's Safeview to the Erez checkpoint in Gaza and to the Qalandia, Bethlehem and Irtah (Sha’ar Efraim) checkpoints in the West Bank. These military checkpoints are part of the Israeli separation barrier which controls the movement of Palestinian civilian residents. This project is strictly illegal under international law according to a 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice.

G4S Israel installed and operates the entire security system of the Ketziot Prison, the central control room of the Megiddo Prison and security services to Damon prison. The Ketziot, Megido, and Damon Prisons, located inside Israel, are incarceration facilities designated specifically for Palestinian political prisoners. In addition, G4S Israel provides the entire security systems and the central control room in Hasharon compound - Rimonim prison, which includes a wing for Palestinian political prisoners.

G4S Israel clearly indicates in its website that it operates in prisons which hold "security prisoners", that is Palestinian political prisoners. Ketziot prison is the biggest incarceration facility in Israel with 2,200 Palestinian political prisoners, Megiddo prison holds over 1,200 Palestinian political and Damon prison over 500 Palestinian political prisoners from the occupied West Bank. Some of these prisoners have not been charged and some are administrative detainees, held without charge. As of April 2015, Israel was holding 414 Palestinians in administrative detention, more than double the number held at the same time on the previous year.

The company also provided security systems for the Kishon ("Al-Jalameh") and Jerusalem ("Russian Compound") detention and interrogation facilities. Human rights organizations have collected evidence showing that Palestinian prisoners are regularly subjected to torture in these facilities.

The placement of prisons for Palestinian prisoners inside Israel and the transfer of prisoners to the occupying power’s territory is a war crime according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Convention’s Article 76 states: “Protected persons accused of offenses shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein”. When Palestinian prisoners are moved to prisons in Israel, it becomes almost impossible for them to have family visits or meet with their lawyers. Prisoners with families on the Gaza Strip have not been able to have visits from family members since 2007. Reports show that Palestinian children are also being held in prisons in Israel, which is a violation of Article 37c of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children have the right to maintain contact with their family through letters and visits, except under special circumstances.

The company installed peripheral defense systems on the walls surrounding the Ofer prison and operates a central control room for the entire Ofer military compound. Ofer is an Israeli prison for Palestinian political prisoners, located in the occupied West Bank, near the settlement of Givat Ze'ev. The prison holds about 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners and includes a military court which tries detainees from the West bank on a daily basis. The conviction rate for Palestinians in Israeli military courts is 99.74%. 

As of June 2015, 93 children were reportedly held in Ofer military prison, The compound also hosts an Israeli military courtroom dedicated to trying Palestinian children. Between 2005-2010, 835 Palestinian minors were accused of stone-throwing in Israeli military courts. Only one was acquitted.

G4S Israel is the sole provider of electronic security systems to the Israeli police. It provided equipment to the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters, located in the highly contested E-1 area next to the Ma'ale Adumim settlement (the Judea and Samaria Police headquarters - “Machoz Shai”). This police force is tasked exclusively with servicing the Israeli settler population in the occupied West Bank.
Security services in illegal Israeli settlements

G4S Israel offers its security services to businesses in illegal settlements, including security equipment and personnel to shops and supermarkets in the Barkan settlement industrial zone, in the West Bank settlements of Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Har Adar, the settlement neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and the settlement of Kalia in the Jordan Valley.

G4S Israel also maintains cooperation with Ariel College in the illegal settlement city of Ariel in the occupied West Bank, which has included the company's participation in an open career day in the college.

The company’s own hired human rights expert, international law professor Hjalte Rasmussen, has stated that: “G4S has contracts with a number of major commercial interests, such as banks, supermarkets, and clothing chains, for the delivery of security guards for branches and stores of these customers as per the customers’ wishes. The branches and stores in question are mainly located in Israel, but G4S is also under contractual obligation to provide guards for the branches and stores that are on exception located east of the ’Green Line’, more specifically in East Jerusalem or on the West Bank”.

In October 2012, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has listed G4S as one of the main companies profiting from Israeli settlements and called on the UN General Assembly and civil society to take action against such businesses. 

In March 2015, the British Government-sponsored National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD has published its findings of the British firm, stating that G4S is currently violating three human rights obligations under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, arising from its involvement in Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians. It has found significant failures by G4S in its overarching obligations to ‘respect human rights’; as well as the obligation to ‘prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to its business operations’ in the region.

In April 2013, following public pressure, the company has stated it would not renew some of its contracts in the occupied West Bank as they come for renewal in 2015, including contracts to supply technologies to Israeli military checkpoints, to the Ofer prison and to the West Bank Israeli police headquarters.

In June 2014, following protests at its annual shareholders meeting, it has committed to stepping out of all Israeli prison contracts as they expire in the next 3 years. As of October 2015, no change in the company operations was registered on the ground.

Given the sale of G4S Israel to the FIMI Opportunity Fund, it is unclear what the status of these decisions are, but regardless, they no longer involve the UK-based multinational G4S corporation.