Mobbu bows out at 3m prisoner escort journeys as GEOAmey replaces G4S

23 September 2011 by Rod McLaren

I saw my first GEOAmey vehicle one afternoon last week, a freshly unwrapped white van that was probably returning some prisoners after their day at Brighton’s courts.

The Ministry of Justice awarded new contracts for prisoner escorting in England and Wales in March 2011, and as of late August GEOAmey are the newest entrant and largest player in that market – they’ll be managing approximately 2,600 daily prisoner movements.

Like the previous rounds of private-sector-delivered escorting, this round of PECS contracts in England and Wales is for seven years with options to extend for three. The contracts are to manage around 1,200 locations in England and Wales, including 760 police stations, 147 prisons, 420 Magistrates’ Courts, 112 Crown Courts, the Appeal Court, 13 Tribunals, and up to 222 County Courts – and around 955,000 prisoner movements annually between those locations. The MoJ expects the new contracts to save £250m (20%) over the initial 7-year period.

So how did the contracted vendors in prisoner escorting do?

There’s plenty of raw data for the 2011-18 contract but we’ll attempt a comparison of the last two contract periods by showing prisoner journeys and revenue rather than a direct geographic comparison because escort regions have changed between 2004 and 2011:

Contracted vendor	2004-111	2011-182
GEOAmey	n/a	3 regions: Southwest/Southeast, EMidlands/Yorkshire & Humberside/North East, and Northwest/West Midlands/Wales. 670,000 prisoner journeys and £90m/year, £572m total.
G4S	2 regions: North and East. 515,000 prisoner journeys/year”: and £65.6m/year, £459m total (and the inter-prisons contract, worth £80m over a shorter term).	none
Reliance	1 region: Southwest/Wales. Est 240,000 prisoner journeys/year3 and est £32.3m/year, £226m total4.	none
Serco	1 region (pdf): London/Southeast. 250,000 prisoner journeys/year and £48.3m/year, £338m total.	1 region: London/East. Est 285,0005 prisoner journeys/year and £42m/year, £280m total (partnering with Wincanton plc).
Total	1,005,000 prisoner journeys/year3 at £146.2m/year, £1,023m total4. £145/prisoner journey.	955,000 prisoner journeys/year at £122-138m/year6, £852.5m total. £128-138/prisoner journey.

Each region had four bidders, except the Northwest/West Midlands/Wales region which had three. The eight award criteria (IV.2.1) measured the bidders across the custodial, logistic and standards spectrum. GEOAmey are the obvious big winner, Serco held ground, while G4S and particularly Reliance lost out⁷. The cost per prisoner journey has dropped in real terms. Hopefully job losses were minimised – I’d guess most employees transferred to new employers under the TUPE legislation.

The contract’s underway. GEOAmey’s partners have delivered, and a few teething troubles were always to be expected.

Ave atque vale⁸

G4S were one of our first clients: in 2004, we built them a web system called PACS to do the custody management at courts. We then added a mobile system called PACS Mobile to track the journeys between prisons and courts on 350+ BlackBerrys. Since then the system has been used by 2,000 G4S vehicle, court, management and compliance staff to manage about 2,000 prisoner journeys daily at 170 courts and 19 vehicle bases across the UK.

But G4S’s transition from England to Scotland in August marks the end of an era for Mobbu: the new PECS contracts introduced new business needs (new geographic areas and inter-prison transfer, at-court efficiencies) and no doubt compliance requirements that the IT systems must meet. G4S’s Scottish contract will have different requirements. We’ve shifted focus to the police market, and GEOAmey are bringing their in-house systems to the contract. And the best of luck to them.

I’m sure it’s considered poor PR practice to draw attention to the loss of a customer, but we’re very proud that our system worked solidly and did its job well. It ran for seven years and handled about 3.1 million prisoner journeys. PACS Mobile is a beloved ancestor of our police product, MFO, but has reached the natural end of its life.

To PACS and PACS Mobile and the people at G4S and Mobbu who ran you, hail and farewell.

.

Footnotes:

¹ Financial numbers are annual and for the eventual 7-year period – NOMS didn’t exercise its option to extend the contracts.

² Financial numbers are annual and for the initial 7-year period. With contract extensions, the totals would jump c 30%.

³ Estimated: 420,000 prisoner journeys annually less approx 180,000 from their Scottish contract = estimated 240,000 journeys

⁴ Estimated: 2011-18 contract is £852.5m, and an approx 20% saving on the previous 2004-11 contract. 2004-11 is therefore implied at approx £1023m. Subtract the GEOAmey revenue figures above = estimated £226m.

⁵ Estimated: 955,000 prisoner journeys annually less GEOAmey’s 670,000 = 285,000 prisoner journeys annually for Serco.

⁶ Estimated: £852.5m over seven years = £121.8m annually. But vendors own estimates sum to £132m annually, so we’ve put the range in.

⁷ G4S have made gains elsewhere: they won Scotland from Reliance – approx 180,000 prisoner journeys prisoner journeys annually, worth £24m/year – nb Scottish prisoner custody is contracted by the Scottish Government rather than the Ministry of Justice so I’ve excluded it from the table above.

⁸ atque in perpetuum, frāter, avē atque valē – and for eternity, brother, hail and farewell – as Catullus saluted his dead brother.

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