Corporate Watch has produced a thorough analysis of UK immigration detention policies by examining the detention of children and families at Yarl’s Wood removal centre.
The report Immigration Prisons: Brutal, Unlawful, and Profitable: Yarl’s Wood a case study examines the procedures at the centre, the closure of the family unit,[1] and the implications for the future of immigration detention. Corporate Watch analyses the inconsistencies between UK Border Agency (UKBA) policies and actions as the UK government professes to end child detention.
According to Corporate Watch, Yarl’s Wood was the main ‘immigration prison’ for women and children and has been heavily criticised in the past for its overcrowding, physical abuse, privacy infringement, communications restrictions, poor medical care, and so on. As a result of a campaign by many organisations (churches, charities, campaigning groups) and individuals the current Con-Dem coalition supposedly ended child detention and the family unit at Yarl’s Wood was closed; however, as Corporate Watch finds, inhumane and unlawful detention continues in the UK.
Immigration Prisons: Brutal, Unlawful, and Profitable lays out the evidence that backs up its assertions that immigration detention is inhumane in almost all cases and is frequently unlawful and that detention in the UK has become a tool to discourage people from coming to the UK, rather than a tool to manage their influx.