The Home Office Select Committee’s staggering characterisation of the UK detention estate comes as little surprise to campaigners and organisations. The report; https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/news-parliament-2017/immigration-detention-report-published-17-19/exposes a ‘shockingly cavalier’ culture within the estate and concludes that the immigration detention system has ‘utterly failed’ its responsibility.
These failings are multi-faceted and multilayered. The Select Committee’s report at the very least, reinforce the concerns and conclusions by numerous organisations and campaigners who have equally x-rayed these disturbing behaviours has become normalised culture that is inherent and routinely expressed with impunity within the detention estate.
A snapshot of the failings of immigration detention highlight; the flagrant exploitation of detainees used as cheap captive labour who are paid £1 per hour. The Shadow Home Office minister Lord Richard Rosser stated ‘The government is certainly redefining what ‘low paid work’ really means’ ( Morning Star, March 19 2019). Failings also find expression in forms of social control of detainees whose rights and freedoms are inextricably linked to compliance with detention regimes to the extent that people have to earn the right to be exploited or risk their ‘privileges’. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/working-clampdownhow-detained-migrants-are-coerced-cut-price-labour
Furthermore, failings also manifest in limited/denial of access to legal advice, poor medical assistance, poor advocacy support, indefinite detention and other forms of injustices. See https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/human-rights-committee/news-parliament-2017/draft-human-rights-act-report-published-17-19/
These routine systemic failings and the consequent wide ranging devastating impact from such failings necessitate not just an enquiry or some cosmetic reforms or even closure of an immigration removal centre. Rather, such failings warrant ending immigration detention as a policy option.
