Academic Center of Law and Business v. Minister of Finance

The Prisons Ordinance Amendment Law (no. 28) established for the first time that an Israeli prison would be operated and managed not by the state of Israel but by a private entity. The amendment required that the government of Israel take specific measures to supervise the private prison corporation and its employees. The amendment also restricted the actions the private entity and its employees could take against individuals imprisoned at the corrections facility. The Academic Center of Law and Business (the center) (plaintiff) and others challenged the amendment’s constitutionality, arguing that the amendment disproportionally impacted the rights of prisoners by transferring the state’s power to imprison to a private entity. Furthermore, the center complained that the human rights of imprisoned individuals would be at greater risk of violation in a privately run prison than in a state-operated corrections facility. The Minister of Finance, the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), and the private company that awarded the concession for the prison (collectively, the defendants) argued that the privatization of a prison was constitutional as other governmental activities had already been privatized, other countries allowed for privatized prison systems, and the human rights of prisoners would be better protected in the privately operated facility because of the strict contractual requirements required of the prison operated.