BID says over 1,000 are held in prison for the purposes of immigration detention and are entirely absent from published Home Office statistics
Immigration detention in a prison is unfair and unjust, Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) said in a report released today.
You can read the report, Denial of justice: the hidden use of UK prisons for immigration detention, here.
The report examines the increasing numbers of immigration detainees being held in the prison estate.
Image credit: WikipediaAccording to the report, 1,214 people were being held as immigration detainees in the prison estate as of 31 December 2013. This total is in addition to the 2,796 people held in immigration detention in immigration removal centres, short-term holding facilities, and pre-departure accommodation.
BID says those detainees held in the prison estate suffer from multiple, systemic, and compounding barriers to accessing justice, with an often devastating effect on their ability to progress their immigration case.
A recent post on openDemocracy also highlighted the problem, explaining how on the completion of a prison sentence, foreign national prisoners can find themselves still behind bars in a period of limbo while the state works out what to do next.
In a letter to the Immigration Minister and the Prisons Minister quoted by BID in its report, BID wrote: "Prison is, quite simply, an inappropriate environment in which to hold those who have served the sentences handed to them by the criminal courts. This is clearly recognised by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) in its standards on the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty, which sets out that holding immigration detainees in prison is "fundamentally flawed". In its most recent report on the UK, published in 2009, the CPT highlighted its concern that it had encountered "a number of foreign nationals who were being held in prison a considerable time after their sentences had expired", and made the explicit recommendation that "such persons, if they are unable to be deported at the end of their sentence, should be transferred to a facility designed to provide conditions of detention and a regime in line with the status of immigration detainees"."
BID is concerned that the Home Office is failing to include the growing number of prison-held detainees in the overall detention statistics, meaning the scale of immigration detention in prisons is not understood by parliamentarians or the public, and cannot therefore be subject to proper scrutiny. BID says this is "entirely unacceptable".
In concluding, the report states: "it is a scandal that the detention under immigration powers in the prison estate of up to one in four detainees in the UK takes place entirely outside statutory and other rules designed to provide safeguards against the improper use of detention and unacceptable detention conditions."