Insufficient staff in prison – Private security guards have to step in in prison – News


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The shortage of staff is also noticeable in the prison system. Private security companies are also used.

They help in the Lenzburg correctional facility, or in the one in Solothurn: private security companies. They are a temporary solution to prison staff shortages. In Lenzburg prison, for example, they were deployed in June and now in August, not for the first time. Are the cantons giving their monopoly on the use of force to someone else?

“In the modern constitutional state, only the state is entitled to exercise violence,” writes the human rights organization “Human Rights” in one opinion. She not only criticizes the use of security companies in prisons, but also in enforcing and monitoring order in communities.

Prison (JVA) Lenzburg

Around 120 people work in the Lenzburg correctional facility to guard the inmates. Only one or two of them are private security guards, says Pascal Payllier, head of the Aargau Prison Office. “In 2019 we called in private security services, and now again. We have sickness and accident-related absences from employees,” he explains.

You can represent it better in custody.

According to the canton, the employees of the security services in Lenzburg are only deployed in custody. The inmates there are usually alone in a cell and do not work in the carpentry or gardening of the prison. “You can represent it better in custody. The people can perform the auxiliary tasks better here than in normal prisons, with little contact with the inmates,” explains Pascal Payllier. In the normal prison, work is done, leisure time is spent, sports are done, here the contact would be much closer.

Legally allowed


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When experts from the Council of Europe visited the Solothurn prison a year ago, they stated in their report that external staff were on duty. At that time, the new cantonal law with the corresponding passages did not yet exist, that was also clear to the government council. He introduced a new law that now allows this possibility.

The use of private security services is also legally secured in Aargau. Private security services may be used for care and surveillance in prison, according to the Introductory Act to the Code of Criminal Procedure. There is nothing more.

Private security services in Lenzburg help with internal transfers, going to the doctor or social services, for example, or with the delivery of food, which takes place three times a day. One of the two people who accompany prison inmates during such transfers is always a cantonal enforcement officer, Payllier notes.

Violence only in exceptional situations

“In the first place, if violence is necessary, the cantonal person would have a say. But of course, it cannot be ruled out that in an exceptional situation the private security service would also have to use force,” says Payllier. But that has never happened in Lenzburg before.

The use of private security services is not a cost-cutting measure: “That is not permissible,” says Payllier. It is really only intended for exceptional cases, illness-related staff shortages and only for a few weeks. It could well be several years before private security operations in Lenzburg prison become necessary, according to Aargau. There are usually enough skilled workers, so that’s not a problem.

Other cantons also rely on security companies


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Other cantons are also familiar with the use of private security services in prisons. The weekly newspaper Schaffhauser AZ, for example, reported that the canton relied on employees from the company Securitas when there was a shortage of staff in the prison.

“They support the prison staff in supervising the courtyard or in looking after inmates who are particularly labour-intensive,” said prison director Lorenz Ammann. In the article, he expressly points out that these private security forces are always closely accompanied by state prison staff and have no decision-making powers.

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