News

• Long detention causes child trauma

The two main aims of the campaign:

1. Community Care wants to ensure that people entering the UK seeking asylum are treated as human beings and given support that meets national and international standards, including those under the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights

2. Community Care wants to challenge the current atmosphere of hysteria, dangerous prejudice and outright racism towards refugees and asylum seekers

More information on the campaign

Special report:

While the poor conditions in Young Offenders’ Institutions often raise doubts over their suitability to hold young people, there are a group of children held in detention whose only crime is to flee persecution, torture or a war-torn country that are faced with strikingly similar conditions – the children of asylum seekers, writes Clare Jerrom.

Fifty six children under-18 were being held in four immigration service removal centres – Dungavel, Harmondsworth, Oakington and Tinsley House – on 2 April this year, according to immigration minister Beverley Hughes in a House of Commons written answer earlier this month.

“Minors are detained only in two limited circumstances: first, as part of a family group whose detention is considered appropriate; second, when unaccompanied, while alternative care arrangements are made and normally just overnight,” she said.

Legal powers to detain are contained in the Immigration Act 1971 and the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. The statutes allow the detention of certain classes of people while decisions are made about their immigration status. This includes those arriving at a UK port without “leave to enter”, those who are awaiting deportation, illegal entrants and those considered likely to abscond.

However, campaigners against the detention of children and recent reports have raised concerns over the adequacy of children’s services within removal centres, and whether the detention of children is suitable or necessary. Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe’s recent suggestion that all asylum seekers should be locked up on arrival into the country has added fuel to the already raging fire.

Chief prisons inspector Anne Owers' first reports into Oakington reception centre and Tinsley House removal centre, both of which detained children for short periods, were published in April.

Owers said the centres were not suitable for stays of anything more than a few days, and needed to have in place good child protection safeguards and links.

The reports recommended that the detention of children “should be avoided wherever possible, and only take place for the shortest possible time, in no case more than seven days”.

Shortly afterwards, the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees, published a scathing report into the policy and highlighted that families may experience lengthy detention. Interviewees had been detained for between 81 and 161 days. Some families were released on bail after lengthy detention raising doubts over the necessity to detain initially.

“Children suffer emotional, physical and psychological harm as a direct result of being detained by the Immigration Service,” the report said.

“Detention is never in the best interest of a child, and children should not be detained under Immigration Act powers,” it recommends, adding that until legislation is changed to reflect the interests of children by exempting them from detention, safeguards must be introduced to limit the damage to children and their families.

Meanwhile in a House of Commons debate earlier this month Michael Connarty, MP for Falkirk East,  said that while the abuse of the asylum process is a problem, “locking up asylum seekers’ children does not contribute to solving that problem”.

He highlighted that families are likely to seek social and educational services for their children and are therefore easy to trace. Having visited Dungavel centre, he said “it was a terrible place to detain children”, yet even if it was moderated “the principle of locking up children is wrong”.

In response, Hughes defended the government’s policy and said: “People are not detained lightly, particularly families”. Hughes criticised BID’s report saying that “it was based on a tiny sample of only nine families, two of whom were never detained”.

In response to Owers’ reports Hughes said that a large proportion of the findings reflect only the comments of the detainees themselves. “As people are generally unhappy about being detained and removed from the country, it is unsurprising that they express dissatisfaction with their situation.”

But last week, as the home affairs committee took evidence in their inquiry into asylum applications, Ann Widdecombe asked whether a lot of the problems associated with the asylum system would be addressed if all new applicants were detained while their claims were processed.

Director of Kent social services Peter Gilroy said the problems would be addressed if the system was fast and where “people are not left languishing in centres”. Gilroy said that while he was “anti-institutions”, it would “take away a lot of operational problems”.

But Children’s Society policy and practice manager Alison Harvey said this raises grave concerns: “To lock children up from beginning to end clearly violates children’s rights, and could be defeated under human rights laws.”

To think that by making conditions here bad for asylum seekers acts as a deterrent is a myth as “people are running away from far worse things,” she added.

BID’s policy officer Sarah Cutler said there is a likelihood that the home affairs committee, of which Widdecombe is a member, will consider detention in any work they produce. “I hope the others on the committee will take issue with this as it is not practical, humane or financially viable.”

‘A Few Families Too Many’ available here