Prison efficiency savings and more restricted regimes: bad news for immigration detainees held in prison estate
The House of Commons Justice Committee today published the report of its year-long inquiry into the impact of the Government’s programme of reforms and efficiency savings across the prison estate, concluding that the combination of estate modernisation and re-configuration, efficiency savings and changes in operational policy, have made a significant contribution to the deterioration in safety.
The press release notes that
“The Committee also found that the fall in staffing levels stemming from redundancies and increased turnover, which at their most acute have resulted in severely restricted regimes, are bound to have reduced the consistency of relationships between officers and prisoners, and in turn affected safety.”
Bail for Immigration Detainees submitted written evidence to the enquiry. The enquiry report made no findings in relation to the use of prison beds for holding immigration detainees, even though over 1200 prison beds were in use by the Home Office for this purpose as recently as 2013.
BID’s Research & Policy Manager Dr Adeline Trude said
“The prison estate is not an appropriate place for holding immigration detainees, including those who have previously served a custodial sentence, unless there is an imperative reason to do so, based on an assessment of risk in each individual case. This view is supported by HM Prison Service, by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, and by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT).
Immigration detainees in the prison estate are overwhelmingly held under serving prisoner regimes, despite assertions to the contrary by the Home Office. Unlike IRCs, communications are highly restricted, and detainees in prisons typically have access to a telephone for only 30 minutes during office hours to try to call legal advisors, and are reliant on the goodwill of prison officers to send faxes to the courts and tribunals.
The Legal Aid Agency and the Home Office do not operate immigration advice surgeries in foreign national only establishments in the prison estate, as they do in the immigration removal centre estate, even where establishments are dedicated to holding only foreign nationals, whether as immigration detainees or remand or serving prisoners, or where there are concentrations of immigration detainees, such as HMP Elmley, HMP Birmingham, HMP Maidstone, HMP Pentonvile, HMP Thameside, HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP Wandsworth.
Holding immigration detainees in the prison estate is a barrier to progression of the substantive immigration case, including removal or deportation, which helps no-one”
Notes
- In March 2014 BID made submissions to the committee on one aspect of this inquiry, namely the ongoing re-configuration of the prison estate, including the extent to which prisons are suitably located and accessible to visitors, and the implications of the Transforming Rehabilitation programme.
- Our submissions related to a specific group of people: immigration detainees held in the prison estate under a Service Level Agreement between the Home Office and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). These are people who are not held under criminal justice powers but rather are detained by the Home Secretary under immigration powers for administrative purposes.
- For further information on the restricted access for immigration detainees in the prison estate to Home Office staff, legal advisers and the courts and tribunals, please refer to BID’s 2014 briefing ‘Denial of justice: the hidden use of UK prisons for immigration detention. Evidence from BID’s outreach, legal & policy teams’.
- As of the 31 December 2013, 2,796 people were held in immigration detention in immigration removal centres, in short-term holding facilities (STHF), and in pre-departure accommodation (PDA) but a further 1214 people were being held as immigration detainees in the prison estate (Hansard 9 April 2014, c249W). The most current published Home Office statistics show that as at 15 December 2014 there were 394 detainees held in prison establishments in England and Wales solely under Immigration powers as set out in the Immigration Act 1971 or UK Borders Act 2007 (Source: Home Office, Immigration statistics, October to December 2014)
