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This latest HMIP report shows that people including survivors of torture and trafficking are being locked up in decrepit conditions, in chaotic and unsafe environments, often with little to no access to justice. Suicidal ideation is widespread. Safeguarding is all but absent. Segregation is used to punish detained people. This is further, compelling proof that immigration detention is dangerous, cruel, and profoundly harmful. It closely echoes what we see on the ground in Harmondsworth, and we know that it destroys lives. It also mirrors the findings of the Brook House Inquiry Report and JRS UK’s research, After Brook House again showed that people continue to be systemically abused and left vulnerable to harm in detention centres across the UK. This emergency at Harmondsworth IRC grows out of years of policy-makers being deaf to evidence, and continuing blindly down a destructive path. The government must now act fast, at the least to implement the Brook House Inquiry recommendations, and ultimately to end the use of immigration detention.
Sarah Teather, Director
After Brook House: continued abuse in immigration detention
