Is there an alternative to locking up migrants in the UK?
If
detention is a tool of war on irregular migration, then the damage on both
sides is severe. But this war is not inevitable. There is a significant area of potential common interest
in a fair system that works primarily by consent
Immigration
detention is crudely effective. If the
priority is to control migrants, it works - virtually no-one escapes from
British detention centres these days. More importantly it works in symbolising, in reinforced concrete and
razor wire, the government’s determination to enforce border security. For these reasons, its expansion in the UK
has been inexorable: a record 28,909 migrants were detained in
2012, up 7% on last year.
However, detention is far less successful at the complex business of actually managing migration. It is hardly a solution to immigration control, as detention spaces will always amount to a tiny fraction of the numbers of irregular migrants. It is also expensive and wasteful: recent research has found that £75 million per year is wasted on the unnecessary long-term detention of migrants who are ultimately released.
It is well-established how harmful detention is for migrants: in the last 18 months alone, for example, the Home Office has four times been found by the High Court to have committed inhuman or degrading treatment of mentally ill migrants in detention. Recognising the damage done by detention to children, the Government introduced a new Family Returns Process in 2011 to minimise the detention of children, without acknowledging that any of the same logic applies to adults.
If detention is a tool of war on irregular migration, then the damage on both sides is severe. But is this war interminable and inevitable? Are the interests of irregular migrants always diametrically opposed to those of governments? Are there alternatives to brute enforcement?
What are ‘alternatives to detention’?
The notion of ‘alternatives to detention’ is gathering momentum around the world in a wide range of contexts. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has chosen it as one of its key campaign focuses for 2013. The International Detention Coalition has analysed and promoted innovative projects around the world that systematically reduce the use of detention, by managing and supporting migrants in the community. A growing body of ideas and experiences undermines the logic of detention and enforcement as presuppositions of immigration control. Could it open up possibilities of radically refiguring the management of immigration to meet the needs of governments and migrants themselves?The idea of alternatives to detention is slippery, being many things to many people. In the UK, it has amounted to a couple of failed pilots, which have demonstrated conclusively that little is achieved by moving refused migrant families to different (unlocked) accommodation and telling them to go home. The Millbank and Glasgow pilots appeared to cause unnecessary distress to families whilst failing to meet the government’s objectives. For once, all sides were in agreement that they were failures.
But elsewhere, very different projects have had opposite results by testing out principles associated with ‘case management’. This approach was first developed in Sweden in the 1990s but has become the object of international attention since 2006 when the hitherto hard-line Australian government used it to move away from mandatory indefinite detention of all irregular migrants. It involves releasing migrants to community-based support, including legal advice, welfare support, housing, and time and space for them to consider all options for their future. It is the polar opposite of the British policy of detention and destitution for refused asylum-seekers. The results have been encouraging for all sides: many migrants have received visas to remain, but the majority who were refused have departed independently.
Such initiatives are proliferating. In the last few years, Belgium has ended the detention of families by housing them in ‘returns houses’, with on-site ‘coaches’ who address welfare needs and investigate and discuss all options, including returns options. Hong Kong has begun releasing vulnerable migrants, including torture survivors and asylum-seekers, to case management from a state-funded NGO. In the US, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is coordinating a nationwide project that gets migrants released into the support of local faith and community networks.
Nothing as imaginative has developed in the UK. Discussion of alternatives has largely been stymied by those dismal UKBA pilots, which seem to have turned both government and civil society off the whole concept. It is clear that models from abroad cannot simply be transposed to the UK. None are perfect; all bring considerable risks. However, given the UK’s current extensive and expanding use of detention, the question must be asked: is there any alternative to exploring alternatives?
What alternatives to detention exist in the UK?
In addition to those pilots formally styled as ‘alternatives to detention’, the UK operates a variety of processes that amount to forms of alternatives. These include release on bail or temporary admission, often to a designated address, with requirements to report regularly to a police station or immigration office. These alternatives hardly amount to solutions for migrants themselves. Research into bail hearings has repeatedly found that decisions are often arbitrary and based on no evidence. And release itself - to temporary accommodation, a supermarket card to keep starvation at bay, and the ever-present prospect of a return to detention - amounts to no kind of life for the individuals ‘lucky’ enough to get it.More fundamentally, these alternatives stay within the control and enforcement model that culminates in detention. They merely allow for modulation of the degree of coercion between different individuals. They can help individuals, but not facilitate a systemic shift away from detention - when someone is bailed, another migrant is detained to take his or her place. They amount to lighter touch enforcement, compulsions that stop short of detention. But they still assume that some, lesser, coercion is necessary. As a result, they are generally additions to detention, allowing coercion of more people, without reducing detention.
If not detention, then what?
If we are to cure this addiction to detention, we need to undermine the core assumptions that underlie it. We need evidence that non-coercive approaches can effectively meet government objectives. This requires addressing the grounds on which detention is justified. But it also means reframing the question so that the question of compliance with immigration control is asked alongside that of the needs and perspectives of migrants themselves. We need be able to answer the question - if not detention, then what?The government’s main justifications for detention, which alternatives must address, are to prevent absconding and/or reoffending; and to ensure returns of migrants who are finally refused leave to remain in the UK. Detention certainly prevents any possibility of absconding, but it is by no means clear that migrants abscond otherwise. There is a lack of evidence on absconding rates of migrants released from detention, although limited government statistics and independent research have suggested that the rate is very low. Bail for Immigration Detainees has recently demonstrated that both UKBA and the courts persistently justify refusals of release by invoking risks of absconding or reoffending, on the basis of flawed and inadequate risk assessments. The lack of evidential basis for this risk-averse mindset is clear. But how to change it?
Likewise, there are no statistics on reoffending rates of foreign ex-offenders. Logic suggests that they will be lower for migrants who are released at the end of their sentence and receive probation supervision, alongside community support, than for those released after long-term detention, without supervision and support because their licence has expired. But, again, the evidence is lacking.
Continue reading for at least as much text here: http://opendemocracy.net/5050/jerome-phelps/is-there-alternative-to-locking-up-migrants-in-uk
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