Fuelling violence: G4S's 'red doors policy' is wholly in character

Back in the seventeenth century it was common to mark the doors of plague victims with a large red cross. Fast forward a few hundred years, and G4S, the world’s largest private security company, is using more paint.

News that G4S is housing asylum seekers in homes with red doors, as a means of identifying the tenants, is appalling; the fuelling of violence against asylum seekers in this way is indefensible.  

This behaviour is nothing new, but wholly in character with G4S.  G4S has long been complicit in the abuse of vulnerable people across the globe. Whether it’s supporting Israeli Apartheid, exploiting crises caused by wars or violating workers’ rights, G4S continues to rake in the profits with little regard for human rights.

In the UK the most controversial part of the company’s business with the government includes prison and immigration services.  Its role in the privatisation of government services in the UK and the trail of financial and human rights abuses that followed is well documented.

The company faced a fraud investigation into overcharging the government between 2005 and 2013 for electronic tagging of prisoners.

On that occasion they paid £109 million plus tax to the British government for overcharging on these contracts, after it became apparent that G4S (alongside its main competitor Serco) were defrauding the government and charging for dead prisoners and in some cases prisoners outside the country.

Most recently, the BBC’s Panorama exposed how G4S staff bullied and intimidated young offenders in their care. It’s called child abuse; yet still G4S remains a major ‘outsourcing partner’ for the government. 

It doesn’t end there. G4S provides services to the Israeli prison system, making it complicit in the illegal Occupation of Palestine and the unlawful imprisonment of Palestinians, including children.  

It also provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel’s illegal Apartheid Wall. By outsourcing Occupation-related work to G4S, the Israeli state frees itself from accountability for human rights violations and breaches of international laws.

Alongside this, the handsome profit G4S collects from its contracts slip into the pockets of its top managers, shareholders, investors and advisers, who connect the global security giant to lucrative government deals.

In the meantime, G4S employees endure precarious employment contracts and poor working conditions, which has led to labour disputes in over a dozen countries.

“There is categorically no G4S policy to house asylum seekers behind red doors,” tweeted G4S when the story broke. Leaked emails have since shown they knew for years this was an issue.

The Home Office investigation subsequently launched into the ‘red doors policy’ is the absolute least that could be done. A more appropriate response would be to heed the calls for G4S to be banned from government contracts.

G4S represents the new ideology of security in a neoliberal world, profiting from and contributing to the misery and exploitation of people across the globe.

War on Want has been calling on G4S to end its complicity in human rights violations for some time. 

Surely now its time is up.

Ross Hemingway, Senior Media & Communications Officer, War on Want