The Detention Market

Yarl's Wood Detention Centre, Bedfordshire (photograph: Graham Turner) 

Detention. Fast becoming a prominent part of the narratives of those seeking sanctuary in the UK, detention is no longer treated as a last resort in the asylum and immigration system. Thanks to the Detained Fast Track (DFT) system, asylum seekers whose cases are considered to be easy to answer (either positive or negative) are detained whilst waiting for the final response from the Home Office on their status. This system has not only massively increased the numbers of asylum seekers who are forced to enter these secure facilities, but has contributed to the progressive criminalisation of those who seek sanctuary in the UK.

According to a report published in The Lancet, a government document admitted that one quarter of all asylum seekers who were detained were done so without sufficient evidence. In the first quarter of 2012, 3500 people were being held in detention centres across the country. According to the figures, this would mean that over 800 detainees were incarcerated unfairly, and that's only according to the government's own criteria.

The detention system is a profitable market. Private companies are fast becoming the primary supplier of facilities and staff, with multi-national companies like Serco, G4S and the Geo Group providing detention centres across the country. If one takes a cautionary look towards the United States, where the growth of private detention centres and prisons has surprisingly been matched by a growth in the detained population, the future of the UK 'detention market' is hardly difficult to predict.

When private companies expand their businesses, they talk about emerging markets and new opportunities; they speculate a return on their initial investment. In the case of detention, these private companies have a vested interest in the increasing securitisation of the UK asylum system. Every additional detainee admitted to a detention centre clocks up figures used to justify the construction of a new centre; every unfairly detained asylum seeker sustains the profits of the private company. This is the reality of what G4S have determined as the 'asylum market.' 

The sad thing is that reports on the poor standards of healthcare, mental health support, and general care in detention centres have continually fallen on deaf ears. Unfortunately, cases like Muhammad's are still allowed to happen:

Abdul Khan pressed the emergency button again. It was after 6 am and his roommate Muhammad Shukat was groaning in agony, clenching his chest, and sweating profusely—he had collapsed for the second time that morning. Nursing staff came in, unlocked the door to the small window-less room, picked Shukat up, put him back in his bed, took his temperature, administered medication, and left the room. After three separate similar visits by nursing staff and ten different frantic calls of the emergency button by 19-year-old immigration detainee Khan, an ambulance was called at about 7·20 am—nearly 2 hours after Khan's initial call for help. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Shukat but the 47-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival to hospital. His body was flown from the UK back to his family in Pakistan. This was Kahn's account of a tragic morning at Colnbrook immigration detention centre, Middlesex, UK, at an inquest in 2012.

Serco, the managers of Colnbrook detention centre, and the Home Office have declared that all recommendations from the inquest have been implemented. However, organisations like Medical Justice and Freedom from Torture maintain that current standards in immigration detention centres are far from satisfactory.

The proliferation of detention in the asylum system and an obsession on the incarceration of 'overstayers' and 'refused' asylum seekers is part of a wider political discourse. A focus on detention allows the government to posture as being 'tough' on illegal immigration, and appeases the entrenched Tory right that haunts the back-benches of Westminister. Yet a question of rights remains. As three cases of unlawful detention of asylum seekers with mental health issues were brought to the High Court in the past year, detained fast track is no longer looking like such an 'easy' option for government to take. Imprisonment without a crime; that just doesn't sound right, does it?