The British government’s Ministry of Justice has submitted a bid for a $9 million contract to help run prisons in Saudi Arabia.

The commercial arm of the Ministry of Justice, Just Solutions international (JSi), has lodged the bid to run the prisons, despite growing criticism from UK human rights groups about the country’s justice system.

The contract, according to The Guardian newspaper, is “to conduct a training needs analysis across all the learning and development programmes within the Saudi Arabian Prison Service”.

JSi, the commercial brand for the National Offender Management Service, which is actively seeking to ‘promote its products and services to international justice markets, has also submitted a 'large scale bid' to the Royal Oman Police to help with the design of a new prison.

The ministry insisted that all JSi projects had had been signed off by both the Foreign Office and the local embassy after an evaluation that included an assessment of human rights. If JSi is successful, the ministry spokesperson said full details of the contract, including human rights safeguards, would be made public.

Saudi Arabia has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks over its justice system after Western governments widely criticised the decision to sentence a Saudi blogger to 1,000 lashes after he was found guilty of insulting Islam. Raif Badawi, a blogger and founder of the "Free Saudi Liberals" website, was also sentenced last year to 10 years in jail and handed a fine of 1 million riyals ($267,000).

Badawi was subjected to the first 50 lashes two weeks ago but a second round of flogging, scheduled to be held last Friday was postponed, ostensibly on medical grounds.

(Pictured below: A memorandum of understanding on judicial cooperation was signed by the UK and Saudi Arabian justice ministers in Riyadh in September. Picture via Twitter: UKinSaudiArabia ‏@UKinSaudiArabia)