An Australian infrastructure company whose subsidiary Broadspectrum formerly operated a private prison in Australia through a joint venture.
Ventia Services Group is an Australian infrastructure company that operates in the military and social infrastructure, infrastructure services, telecommunications, and transportation industries in Australia and New Zealand.
Ventia subsidiary Broadspectrum formerly operated Parklea Correctional Centre in Australia through a joint venture with Management and Training Corporation (MTC), one of the world’s largest private prison companies. In August 2022, the company sold its 50% interest in its MTC-Broadspectrum joint venture to Management and Training Corporation.
Serious occurred during Broadspectrum’s tenure as joint operator of Parklea Correctional Center. In July 2021, people incarcerated at Parklea rebelled against racism and poor conditions at the prison. MTC-Broadspectrum was also criticized for mismanagement and cover-ups of COVID-19 outbreaks that began at the prison in August 2021. Separately, MTC has a history of bribery and sexual assaults in prisons it has operated in the U.S., resulting in the cancellation of one contract in Arizona.
Parklea Correctional Centre transitioned from a publicly operated to privately run prison in 2009, with GEO Group as its operator. While GEO Group’s contract was to last until 2019, it was terminated in 2018 following a government investigation that revealed mismanagement, deaths of people in the prison, inadequate healthcare, and other human rights abuses.
In 2019, operations of the prison transferred to the MTC-Broadspectrum joint venture under a contract worth $986 million, set to end in 2026. At the time, Broadspectrum was owned by Spanish company Ferrovial, which then sold it to Ventia in 2020.
Until October 2017, Broadspectrum managed two Australian offshore immigration jails on the Manus Island, part of Papua New Guinea, and the island-state of Nauru. The Australian government established these jails to prevent asylum seekers from reaching the Australian mainland.
In 2016, a few months before Ferrovial acquired Broadspectrum, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled that the detention of asylum seekers in Manus Island was illegal. Later that year, leaked documents uncovered severe abuse of children at the Nauru jail. Ferrovial decided not to apply to extend the original contract for operating the jails, which was due to expire in 2017.