A sense of déjà vu
SDV director, Kate Alexander, takes her regular look at the quarterly detention statistics.
You wouldn’t know it from looking at the headlines, but the latest official statistics on detention are out today. They rarely get the attention that other aspects of the migration statistics do, but they’re always worth a closer look, especially as we know that the UK Government intends to make much more use of detention in future – the recently passed (and not yet fully in force) Illegal Migration Act allows for the indefinite detention of anyone arriving in the UK by irregular means.
People entering detention
In the year to the end of September 2023, 16,363 people entered immigration detention. This is 16% fewer than in the previous year. The official commentary to the statistics tells us that this drop is in part due to the fact that people arriving in small boats are less likely to be detained on arrival. Instead, many are ‘processed’ at Manston, short term holding facility, before being moved to ‘community based accommodation’.
Manston is intended to hold people for under 24 hours. This is why it is not included in the detention statistics. However, we know that people were in Manston for more than 24 hours in appalling conditions in the year these statistics cover. Were they to be included, the numbers entering detention would be considerably higher.
Furthermore, the people being ‘processed’ at Manston are precisely the people the Illegal Migration Act targets and who the Government wants to detain indefinitely. We can therefore anticipate that this drop in the number of people entering detention will be reversed sharply when the Act’s detention provisions are in force.
During the year to the end of September 2023, 430 people entered detention in Dungavel (though others may have been moved there from other centres), a 7% increase on the previous year. Dungavel was rarely used to detain people who had arrived in the UK in small boats, in contrast to the centres near the London airports. This rise in people beginning their detention there may suggest that, despite the overall fall in the numbers detained, there has been an increase over the year in detentions from the community.
People in detention
On 30 September 2023, there were 1,841 held in immigration detention across the UK, 11% fewer than at the same date last year. Closer examination of the figures shows that this is largely explained by a fall of 81% in people being held under immigration powers in prison. The numbers held in most detention centres were higher than the previous year, a rise particularly marked in Dungavel.
Ninety-eight people were detained in Dungavel at the end of September this year, a 61% increase on the previous year, and close to its capacity of 125. This accords with our own experience of visiting the centre in 2023, as does the high number of Albanians detained in Dungavel – 37 of the 98 detained their at the end of September.
People leaving detention
During the year to the end of September 2023, 16,674 left detention, 28% fewer than in the previous year. As we have come to expect, the majority of people leaving detention were released into the community on leaving detention. Just 27% were removed from the UK.
The UK Government insists that detention is necessary to remove people who have no right to be in the UK from the country. Yet for the last eight years, the proportion of people leaving detention who have been removed has been under 50%.
Over that eight years, tens of thousands of people have been detained and then released, their detention having achieved absolutely nothing except to traumatise them at great expense to the tax payer.
Length of detention
The latest figures tell us nothing about how long people in detention at the end of September 2023 had been there. These figures have not been updated for a year, denying us important information about the detained population. We know from our own experience, however, that there are people in Dungavel who have been there for many months and some for over a year.
Today’s figures do tell us how long the people who left detention had been detained. They show that long term detention remains very much part of the system. Of the 16,674 people who left detention in the year to the end of September 2023, 35% (5,868) had been detained for more than 28 days.
159 people left detention after being detained for over a year.
11 people left detention after being detained for more than four years. And at no time during those four years did they know how long their detention would last. Think what you have done in those four years.
There are alternatives
There is always a sense of déjà vu in analysing these figures: thousands of people detained, many for considerable periods of time, none of them knowing when their detention would end, most of them being released back into the community. The numbers fluctuate, but the story they tell remains remarkably consistent.
That the Government’s response has been to legislate to allow it to detain even more people is incomprehensible.
Earlier this year, an evaluation of a Home Office commissioned Alternative to Detention pilot project was published. It added to the growing body of evidence from both home and abroad that providing holistic support to people to resolve their immigration cases in the community works.
It’s time for the Government to act on the evidence from its own pilot projects and move away from detention to humane and cost effective alternatives.
