Why are people detained in the prison estate?
The Immigration Act 1971 does not specify where people under its provisions should be detained. The Home Office uses the prison estate as an extension of the IRC estate in times of emergency and to detain people deemed to pose a risk to safety and stability in IRCs.
The Home Office’s Detainee Population Management Unit (DEPMU) decides if people detained are to be held in a prison or an IRC. The decision to keep individuals in prison is made not by an immigration judge, but by a junior civil servant [1]. The Detention General Instructions set out a number of considerations to determine whether someone should be detained in prison [2]. However, over time the use of prison as a place of detention has fluctuated and largely been determined by external influences resulting in people remaining in prison post-sentence regardless of having been assessed to pose a particular risk that requires that they remain there. As we discuss later in this chapter, this practice – widely referred to as “double punishment” - presents unique disadvantages for people impacted where a stricter carceral regime continues as opposed to a slightly more liberal regime at IRCs.
HMIP-Immigration-detainees-findings-paper-web-2015-1 PDF (www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6509c3af22a783000d43e8cf/Detention+General+instructions.pdf
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