Back to business as usual?

SDV Director, Kate Alexander, takes a look at the latest detention statistics from the Home Office

The quarterly detention statistics are out today, giving us a picture of detention in the UK at the end of March 2021, a year after the start of the pandemic.

2020 was a year like no other with the pandemic resulting in historically low numbers of people in detention, and fewer removals. But while the pandemic is not over, there are signs in the new statistics, as well as in Home Office policy and practice, of a return to a more familar story.

The figures show that 12,937 people entered immigration detention in the year to the end of March 2021. This is 44 per cent fewer than in the previous year, which is welcome. But it is surprising that the UK Government thought that it was appropriate to detain nearly 13,000 people in secure conditions during a global pandemic when prospects of removing them (the supposed purpose of detention) were limited. In their commentary on the statistics, the government notes that many of those entering detention over the period were “clandestine arrivals detained for short periods for processing”.

This bland phraseology masks considerable distress. Our colleagues working in detention centres in London have been working tirelessly to provide support to traumatised people arriving after perilous journeys, only to be confined in prison like conditions. It is also important to remember the many people seeking asylum who have been confined in army barracks, and other wholly inappropriate detention-like conditions, are not included in these detention figures.

At the end March, 1,033 people were in detention, 15 per cent more than at the same time last year. The figure is still considerably lower than the 1,839 people who were detained at the end of March 2019, but the trend is clearly upward.

The figures show that an increasing proportion of people were detained for short periods: 64 per cent of those who left detention in year ending March 2021 were detained for seven days or less, up from 38 per cent in the preceding year. Again, the commentary links this to people seeking asylum being detained for a short period on arrival.

But this headline figure obscures the fact that many people were detained for very long periods. 2,667 people leaving detention in the year (21 per cent) had been detained for more than 28 days, and 385 (3 per cent) had been detained for more than 6 months. At the end of March 2021, 636 of the people in detention (62 percent) had been detained for longer than 28 days, and 158 (15 per cent) had been detained for six months or more. 48 people had been detained for over a year and one had been detained for more than three years – all during a public health crisis.

Let's take a look at the situation in Scotland as revealed by the statistics. At the end of March 2021, just 23 people were detained in Dungavel, compared to 26 at the same time last year. The numbers detained there rose to 32 at the end of September 2020 but fell in subsequent quarters. Of the 23 people who were detained in Dungavel at the end of March, 12 had been there for more than 28 days and five (nearly a quarter) had been detained there for over six months.

Over the course of the year to March 2021, 150 people entered detention in Dungavel. This figure may not accurately reflect the numbers of people who have been detained there over the year as it does not include people who were moved to Dungavel after being detained elsewhere. However, it does suggest that there has been far less movement into Dungavel than other centres, and this is certainly something we have observed over the year.

Our conversations with staff and our own observations have suggested that almost everyone arriving in Dungavel in the year to the end of March 2021 has arrived from prison, having completed their sentence. Very few people have arrived from the community, and Dungavel has certainly not seen large numbers of people arriving after having made dangerous journeys across the channel.

However, partly as a result of the extraordinary events in Pollokshields this month, we now know that the Home Office has resumed dawn raids and we also know that people have now been sent to Dungavel after being picked up in the community.

These developments, viewed alongside the rise in the number of people in detention, the proposals revealed in the New Plan for Immigration, and the announcement of a new detention centre at Hassockfield, tell us that the Home Office has little intention of maintaining the lower levels of detention seen over the last year, let alone seeking to reduce detention further. For the UK Government, it appears to be back to business as usual.