Little to celebrate in the latest detention statistics

SDV director, Kate Alexander analyses the latest figures fromm the Home Office

The quarterly detention statistics are out today and they present a sobering picture. After the dramatic falls in both the numbers of people entering detention and the number in detention during the height of the pandemic, the use of detention is again on the rise.

In the year to the end of September 2021, 21,365 people entered immigration detention, 24 per cent more than in the previous year, when the impact of the pandemic was more severe. The number is just 12 per cent fewer than the 24,468 people brought to detention in the year to September 2019, before the pandemic hit, and suggests that the Home Office is quickly returning to business as usual, despite ongoing public health concerns.

At the end of September 2021, there were 1,410 people in detention (including those detained in prisons), 30 per cent more than at the same time the previous year (990), but 23 per cent fewer than pre-pandemic levels at the end of September 2019 (1,826).

Some people continue to be detained for very long periods. At the end of September 2021, 143 people had been detained for six months or more, 43 people had been detained for a year or more. One person had been detained for more than three years. There remains no time limit on detention, so none of these people, nor the hundreds more detained with them, knew when their detention would end.

Nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of those who left detention in the year ending September 2021 were detained for seven days or less, compared to 48 per cent in the previous year. However, this is less of a cause for celebration than it might appear. This apparent shortening of detention is partly explained by large numbers of highly traumatised people arriving in the UK from the channel being detained for a few days, before being released to claim asylum.

Just this week it has been reported that in mid October, for the second time in a month, people in these circumstances were detained in Dungavel, more than 500 miles from Kent, having been brought there by bus immediately on arrival.

The latest statistics allow us to see the impact of this practice. At the end of September this year, 96 people were detained in Dungavel. This is more than three times the number detained there at the end of the last quarter (29), and the highest quarterly figure recorded since March 2018. 70 of them had been detained for fewer than three days, suggesting that this number were people who had arrived from the channel.

Of the 26 other people detained at Dungavel at the time, two thirds (17) had been detained for more than 28 days and 3 had been detained for six months or more. One had been detained for more than a year. The recent inspection report for Dungavel highlighted the very long periods of detention some people had been subjected to at the centre.

As has become familiar, the figures once again show detention’s ineffectiveness at achieving its stated purpose of removing people from the country. In the year to the end of September 2021, just 16 per cent of people leaving detention were removed from the country. Restrictions on international travel throughout the pandemic have had an impact on the ability of the Home Office to return people to their countries of origin. That they continued to detain people despite limited prospects of removal during a global pandemic is a matter of grave concern.

This week, a new detention centre for women opened at Derwentside, the first new detention centre since the opening of the (now closed) Verne in 2014. The Borders Bill continues to make its way through parliament and its provisions will increase detention, while also proposing offshore detention and an increase in in the use of quasi detention, such as reception centres.

Against this backdrop, we know that arguing for meaningful detention reform is harder than it has been for years. But, along with our partners in Detention Forum, we will continue to argue for an end to immigration detention, and a move to community based alternatives, within an overall immigration system based on engagement rather than enforcement. Detention is never the answer.