The U.K.s chief inspector of prisons has grown so concerned about the conditions in a West London immigrant detention center—which he says are the “worst in the country”—that he tried to rope in the British Home Secretary.
A report written by Charlie Taylor—the prison inspector in question—found that conditions within Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Center were “truly shocking” and “chaotic,” putting detainees at “immanent risk.” The facility is, Taylor says, overcrowded, decrepit, and plagued by widespread violence and drug use. In an attempt to get some action on the problem, he says that he reached out in March to James Cleverly, but neither Cleverly nor anyone who works for him responded to Taylor’s attempt at contact.
Harmondsworth is run by the contracted company Mitie Care and Custody. When asked for comment, a company spokesperson said that occupancy is unusually dense due to the fact that some parts of the center are currently out of service for remodeling and refurbishing.
Taylor’s letter to Cleverly was prompted by inspection report findings which revealed that conditions at the facility had decayed significantly since the previous round of inspections. During the interval, cell population had been doubled-up, suicide attempts had spiked, and the number of violent assaults had doubled. If detainees refused to stay in an overcrowded cell, they were thrown into solitary confinement until they decided to comply.
Staff at the facility coped with these problems by hiding in their offices with “do not enter” signs on their doors, allowing them to turn a blind eye to the conditions within their facility.
Taylor said in his letter to Cleverly that policy holds that immigration removal centers are only for people who are due to be deported in the immediate future, yet at this center around sixty percent of those detained were released back into the country, and only a third of the detainees were properly deported. In such a case, Taylor asks, why is so much taxpayer money being spent locking up these individuals in the first place?
