Oakington IRC Condemned As Unsafe

The latest HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP) report in to Oakington Immigration Reception Centre in Cambridgeshire, the government's flagship "fast-track" asylum centre, had "lost direction and purpose and is not performing well, especially in the areas of safety and respect". In fact, the relationships between the Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) security staff running the centre and the 328 detainees had deteriorated to the extent that they are significantly worse than at any other removal centre.

"Half the detainees, compared with a third last time [2005], said that they had felt unsafe. Only 60%, compared with 89% last time, and 94% in 2004, said that most staff treated them with respect. These are significant and troubling slippages." The use of force to control detainees had also increased at the centre from 53 incidents last year to 34 in the first six months of this year. The number of detainees put on segregation for breaching rules has also risen, from 328 times in the whole of 2007 to 220 in the first six months of this year.

The report also states the management and staff take so little interest in individual detainees that they were unaware of the fact that they had been holding one Chinese man for nearly two years. The Chinese authorities had said that the remote village he came from did not exist and it took 16 months before an immigration officer bothered to check on the internet and found it was genuine. "After 16 months, a member of the UK Border Agency team at Oakington established through the internet that the village did indeed exist and sent a copy of the map showing the village to the case owner. She also reported to the case owner that he appeared compliant and would like to return as soon as possible."

When the information was then passed on to the relevant case worker, the man was issued with a notice of non-compliance with the authorities and threatened with legal action and his monthly review also continued to claim that he had given false information about his address. On top of this "he had already served a short custodial sentence for having a false document and was now at risk of a further custodial sentence," the report said.

Interestingly, Global Solutions Ltd is the company that, in addition to already running Tinsley House, will be operating the latest addition to the Detention estate when Brook House at Gatwick Airport opens at the end of February or the beginning of March next year. We can only hope that the GSL staff make a better fist (if that's the right phrase) of their duty of care that the law imposes upon them. But given the number of complaints from staff about the way that management are forcing them to cut corners and disregard the welfare of the detainees in their custody (see "Outsourcing Abuse", the latest publication by Medical Justice) we somehow doubt it.