Report recommends immigration detainees should only be held in prison in exceptional circumstances
A recent report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons for England and Wales (HM Inspectorate of Prisons) provides information on immigration detainees in the prison system.
You can read the 15-page report here.
According to the report, 9,300 foreign nationals were held in prisons in England and Wales on 30 June, with 357 of those being held under immigration powers. Almost all immigration detainees held in prisons are ex-prisoners.
"In almost all our inspections of men's prisons we find immigration detainees. The numbers vary between prisons but we often find more in large urban areas, especially London. For example, in our 2014 inspection of Wormwood Scrubs, a 'hub' prison for foreign national prisoners, we found 53 immigration detainees, one of whom had been held for 18 months after completing his sentence," the report says.
The report notes that immigration detainees in prisons have much poorer access to publicly funded legal advice and representation than those held in immigration removal centres (IRCs).
Few prisons have arrangements for independent immigration advisors to attend.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons says: "As there is no duty advice scheme, detainees in prisons have no guaranteed access to a legal advisor. Instead they have to contact lawyers themselves. Many such immigration detainees rely on word of mouth recommendations from other prisoners or the advertisements in the prisoner newspaper, Inside Time, to source a lawyer. The terms of the contract with the LAA mean that lawyers may be reluctant to visit immigration detainees in prisons because of the long travel times associated with getting to some prisons. In addition, lawyers will only visit detainees if they know they will get paid by the LAA. However, the LAA will only fund a protection case if it has a 50% chance of success. To assess whether the case meets this threshold a face-to-face interview is required between the lawyer and the detainee. In an IRC this assessment can be conducted in the free 30 minute advice slot. But for prisons lawyers find themselves in a catch 22 situation: they are unlikely to risk travelling, sometimes long distances, to take instructions from a detainee if there is a chance they will not be paid."
The report also raised concerns over the poorer access for communications with the outside world for immigration detainees in prisons compared to those in IRCs, and the less frequent contact with staff from the Home Office's immigration enforcement directorate.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons recommends that immigration detainees should only be held in prison in very exceptional circumstances following risk assessment and with the authority of an immigration judge.
Court of Appeal rules no human breach to hold ex-prisoners awaiting deportation
On Friday, the Court of Appeal ruled in Idira, R (On the Application "Of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 1187 that holding time-served convicted foreign national offenders (TSFNOs) in prisons while they await deportation was not a breach of article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
EIN members can read the judgment here. The Herald Scotland reported on the case here.
Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls, stated in the judgment: "I acknowledge at once that detention in an IRC is generally more appropriate for immigrant detainees than detention in prison. This includes TSFNOs who have been assessed as not posing a risk to the stability of IRCs or to the safety of others being held there. But I do not accept that detention in a prison would generally be arbitrary and therefore in breach of article 5(1). For some vulnerable detainees, detention in prison may be seriously inappropriate and on that account arbitrary."
"In my view, the question whether a person is being detained in a place and subject to conditions which are seriously inappropriate must be answered by having regard to all relevant circumstances. A prison is not an inappropriate (still less a seriously inappropriate) place in which to detain an able-bodied man who is due to be removed from the country on the ground that his criminality makes his departure conducive to the public good and whom the public interest requires to be detained while that is arranged … I conclude, therefore, that immigration detention in a prison rather than an IRC is not generally contrary to article 5(1)."