The calm before the storm?

Source: Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2023, Home Office

SDV director, Kate Alexander, takes her regular look at the quarterly detention statistics

The latest immigration statistics are out today, covering the period up to the end of June 2023. As before, all media and political focus has been on the ever increasing backlog in people awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. This blog focuses on the detention figures released at the same time, which rarely receive much attention

This figures are the first to be released since the passage of the Illegal Migration Act, which allows for the mass indefinite detention of anyone arriving to seek asylum in the UK by irregular means. The data relate to the period before the Act passed in July, so may represent something of the calm before the storm. There is currently no shortage of demand for our visiting service in Dungavel, and we are gearing up for a sharp increase in the number of people detained there.

The official commentary notes that in 2023, people arriving to the UK in small boats were rarely processed in detention centres like Dungavel, as they were in 2021 and 2022. Most arrivals are routed to Manston, which is intended only to hold people for a maximum of 24 hours, but also has residential facilities that can hold people for four days. But we know that people are frequently detained there for longer than these limits. None of the people who have passed through Manston are included in the figures out today.

People entering detention

In the year to the end of June 2023, 20,354 people entered immigration detention, 16 per cent fewer than in 2022.

The figures released today only show us how many people arrived in Dungavel as their first place of detention, and so do not include people who were moved there from another part of the detention estate. However, comparing Home Office figures to the data presented in the Dungavel Independent Monitoring Board Report for 2021, indicates that just three per cent of arrivals in Dungavel were from another centre, suggesting that the figures released today, give a fairly accurate picture of people arriving in Dungavel over the course of a year.

They show that the decline in numbers entering detention has been much less pronounced in Dungavel than across the whole of the estate.

In the year to the end of June 2023, 406 people entered detention in Dungavel, only 4 per cent fewer than in the previous year.

We know that the number of people entering detention in Dungavel in the year to the end of June 2022 includes at least two busloads of people who had been brought directly to the centre from the channel after arriving on small boats. Most of these people left the centre within a few days.  

If, as we understand from the official commentary to today’s figures, this is no longer happening, it seems likely that Dungavel is now being used to detain people at a greater rate than last year. This interpretation certainly chimes with our experience of visiting over the last year.

People in detention

At the end of June 2023, there were 1,924 people held in immigration detention across the UK, 6 per cent fewer than at the same time the previous year.

Again, the picture is different from Dungavel, where at the end of June this year, 72 people were detained, 23 per cent fewer than at the same time last year. However, as the chart above shows, the number of people detained at Dungavel at the end of last June, was particularly high (almost equal to the number at the end of September 2021, when we know 70 people had arrived on a bus from the channel). Since the end of last year, we have seen an upward trend. Our observations at the centre since the end of June suggest this upward trend continues and we have seen 80-90 people detained in the last few weeks.

People leaving detention

In the year to the end of June 2023, 20,563 people left detention, 14 per cent fewer than in the previous year.

 As we have come to expect over many years, the figures continue to show how ineffective detention is at its stated purpose of removing people from the country. Just 22 per cent of those leaving detention were removed. Almost all the rest (75 per cent) were released back into the community, some after being detained for a long time.

A wide variety of research from both home and abroad shows the effectiveness of community-based alternatives to detention, using a case management approach tailored to the needs of specific communities. The UK Government is well aware of this. It commissioned its own pilot projects, both of which have been independently evaluated and shown to be effective. Yet they are determined not to roll similar projects out, in favour of continuing and extending the use of detention, costing the tax payer millions, and causing enormous harm to the people affected, their families and their communities.

Length of detention

30 per cent of those leaving detention in the year to the end of June had been detained for more than 28 days (6,231 people)

This top line figure shows that long term detention remains a reality for thousands of people leaving detention, but some are detained for far longer.

569 people left detention after being detained for more than six months and 152 had been detained for more than a year. Eleven people left detention after being detained for more than four years years – since well before the pandemic.

The figures for people in detention at the end of each quarter have not been updated since September 2022, denying us important information about the recent population in detention. However, there are several people currently in Dungavel who we have been visiting for nine months or more.

As always, it is crucial to remember that nobody in detention knows when (or how) their detention will end, causing real emotional, mental and physical harm, which we witness in Dungavel every week.

 What next?

The next immigration statistics are due in November. It remains to be seen whether the provisions of the Illegal Migration Act will be in force by then and the impact that might have. This latest set of detention figures, coupled with our experience visiting Dungavel, feels as if it is “business as usual” but with signs of worrying change to come.  

Our visitors will continue to go to the Dungavel twice a week to offer support, however many people pass through its gates in future.