History of the use of prisons to detain people held under immigration powers

Media reporting, public opinion, and political concerns about “foreign national criminals” in the UK, including how they are treated in detention, were and continue to be shaped by what came to be known as the “foreign national prisoner crisis” in 2006. This spiralled in April 2006 when it became a media scandal that more than one thousand “foreign criminals” had been released from prison over the preceding seven years without first being considered for deportation by the then Immigration and Nationality Department (IND).

“The ‘foreign national prisoner crisis’ surfaced amid more general moral panic about the number of migrants, especially asylum seekers who had been arriving in Britain over recent years. New Labour had been in power for nine years at this point and, whilst they had demonstrated their steadfast commitment to draconian immigration policies, they had not done enough to assuage the Conservative opposition and the tabloid press. As such, when the “foreign prisoner crisis” hit, it was made to represent not only Labour’s lack of control over immigration, but also the governments soft touch approach to crime and welfare. The ‘foreign criminal’ emerged here as a kind of ‘perfect villain’… with far reaching and ongoing consequences for policy and practice.”

(extract from Deporting Black Britons, Luke De Noronha)

This event continues to shape ministerial and Home Office approaches to policy making. After the ‘crisis’, the Home Office took a precautionary and punitive approach. Legislation was rushed through introducing a presumption in favour of deportation for so called “foreign criminals”, in an attempt to remedy the criticisms of the Home Office, by then labelled as “not fit for purpose”.

Deportation and detention replaced rehabilitation and integration.

From 2008 onwards, people subject to deportation were usually moved to the IRC estate after serving their custodial sentence, often subject to extended periods in detention.

Under operational pressure in 2011 the Home Office entered into a Service Level Agreement with what was known then as The National Offender Management Service (NOMS, now HMPPS), under which a number of places in prisons were made available for people detained under immigration powers. Having paid for these beds the Home Office intended to use them and over time the proportion of people detained in prison increased.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people detained in prisons under Immigration Act powers reached its peak of more than 650 people detained in prisons in late 2021. At this time, people held under immigration powers in prisons outnumbered people held in IRCs and RSTHFs. This was also at a time when prison regimes were even more restricted and people were held in their cells for as long as 23 hours of the day in stark contrast to the detention centre rules which state that people held under immigration powers should be in a “relaxed regime” with “as much freedom as possible”.

More recently, numbers have decreased and there were 254 people detained in prisons under immigration powers at the end of June 2023, with visitor groups seeing people transferred more quickly to IRCs. When people are moved from prison to IRCs, they often act as support systems for those detained, as their experiences of prison have somehow shaped their resistance to power imbalance, and they are more likely to understand the UK systems.