A British multinational outsourcing company that operates prisons and immigration jails in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and the UK.
Serco Group PLC, based in the United Kingdom, provides outsourcing services to government agencies and corporations around the world. The company operates across multiple sectors including the military, “criminal justice,” immigration, space, healthcare, transportation, and customer services industries. As of 2022, it is one of the top 100 military services companies in the world.
Serco is one of the main companies that manages prisons and immigration jails in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K. These prisons and immigration jails have long been criticized for their inhumane conditions and abuses, including physical and sexual assault. Some of these allegations have caused the company to lose contracts.
United Kingdom
As of September 2024, Serco operates five prisons in the U.K., responsible for incarcerating over 4,500 people: HMP Ashfield, Doncaster, Dovegate, Fosse Way, and Thameside. It also operates three immigration removal centers (IRCs) on behalf of U.K. immigration authorities: Derwentside, Gatwick (comprising the Brook House and Tinsley House IRCs), and Yarl’s Wood. As part of its prison and immigration detention operations in the U.K., Serco provides “prisoner escort services.” Through these services, the company transports over 42,000 incarcerated individuals, including children, to and from prisons and police stations and/or court appearances, each month.
Serco has increasingly been piloting new surveillance technologies for use within its U.K. prisons and immigration jails. In 2023, for example, it partnered with Microsoft UK to use Microsoft’s VisionAI products to “automatically identify, classify, and retrieve prisoner property.” Serco has stated that once this technology has been fully tested, it will “aim to deploy it for similar use…in its prison and immigration estates globally.” The company has also been piloting automated facial recognition tools to monitor people held in its prisons.
Australia
In Australia, Serco designed and built the country’s largest prison, the Clarence Correctional Centre. As of its opening in 2020, the 1,700-bed prison will be operated and maintained by Serco under a 20-year contract. The company also, as of September 2024, manages and operates Australia’s Adelaide Remand Centre and 1,525-bed Acacia Prison. Serco previously managed the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre (SQCC) until 2021, when it was returned to public operation after a government investigation into Queensland prisons found evidence of overcrowding, an increased number of assaults, and cases of prison officers smuggling drugs and weapons to incarcerated individuals.
Since 2009, Serco has been managing Australia’s immigration jails. In 2014, the company was awarded a contract for managing all immigration jails in Mainland Australia. This contract is in effect until December 2024, at which time Serco can rebid for it. In 2016, Serco unsuccessfully attempted to replace Ferrovial as the operator of Australia’s offshore immigration jails on Manus and Nauru Islands.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, Serco designed, built, commissioned, and operates the 960-bed Auckland South Corrections Facility (Kohuora). Opened in 2015, the prison is being operated by Serco under a 25-year contract. As with Serco’s other prisons, the Auckland South Corrections Facility has been the subject of numerous allegations of negligence and violence. In March 2022, for example, individuals incarcerated at the prison alleged that Serco had mismanaged COVID-19 lockdowns and mental health issues within the prison, resulting in violence and cases of suicide. In 2019, it was revealed that officers at the same prison routinely locked incarcerated individuals in their cells for “extended amounts of time.” Serco also previously managed the Mt Eden Corrections Facility until 2017, when it lost this contract after videos of prison ‘fight clubs’ surfaced online.
Germany
In March 2024, Serco acquired German company European Homecare (EHC), which operates over 100 “accommodation facilities,” including some immigration jails. As of 2022, for example, the company reportedly operates Germany’s Dresden Deportation Detention Centre. According to the Global Detention Project, EHC previously operated emergency refugee shelters/immigration jails in Burbach and Essen, where guards reportedly assaulted refugees and took photos documenting their abuse.
Activities in the US
In the U.S., Serco’s activities focus on military, healthcare, transportation, and outsourced government services, such as managing retirement systems. Between 2015 and 2016, the company lobbied extensively at both the federal and local levels in an attempt to open an immigration jail for families in Texas; its proposal, however, was rejected.
Serco’s largest U.S. client, as of September 2024, is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Between 2005 and 2023, the DOD awarded Serco contracts worth over $6.7 billion for “anti-terrorism” systems, space and naval warfare systems, operations support, and other technologies and services.
Serco is also a major contractor of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Between 2005 and 2022, DHS awarded the company contracts worth over $821 million. While the majority of these contracts were held between Serco and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the company has also contracted with Customs and Border Protection and Immigration Enforcement and Customs for system design support, “curriculum development,” and other services.
- In June 2017, Swedish Bank SEB added Serco in its no-buy-list. The bank declared that it is removing from all its funds forty companies "that violate international standards for the environment, corruption, human rights and labor law." The bank had previously stopped investing in companies involved in nuclear programs and in coal production.