After Brook House: continued abuse in immigration detention

The Brook House Inquiry report, published in September 2023 examined abuse at Brook House occurring over several months in 2017. It found numerous instances of violent abuse against detained people, and routine, layered failures to care for and safeguard them, alongside a “toxic” and “dehumanising” culture. The Inquiry report itself observed that these problems were not isolated or confined to Brook House, and often persisted at the time of writing.

JRS UK’s research – conducted with people with more recent experience of detention at different detention centres – finds clear, and deeply disturbing, parallels between practices and culture revealed by the Brook House Inquiry and recent and ongoing practices and culture across UK immigration detention.

• Immigration detention feels like prison;
• People are segregated inappropriately;
• There are huge, routine deficiencies in healthcare provision, including failure to provide necessary medicine and staff ignoring medical emergencies;
• It is extraordinarily difficult to access mental health support in detention and being in detention is profoundly harmful to mental health;

• Safeguards for vulnerable people are largely absent and where they exist do not work. Vulnerable people are rotunely kept in detention;
• Force is used inappropriately, and often gratuitously, against detained people;
• There is a staffing culture of abuse and humiliation within detention centres, and in the practices of detaining people and moving detained people;
• Long and indefinite detention are especially harmful.

 

 

“I was locked in a small cell in the back of a van with my daughter. I was struggling to breathe. I asked to go to the toilet. I have a medical condition which means I have to urinate frequently so I needed to go. They told me they could not stop. I begged them to stop, I said I needed the toilet. Eventually they stopped at services and they said loudly in the front to each other – ‘oh I really need the toilet’ and they went, but they did not take me.  I was crying. We continued on the next leg of the journey and eventually I could not hold it any longer, it was like torture, and I wet myself. They came and gave me a pink plastic bag to urinate in, but it was too late then. When they took me out of the van at the other end, it was all down my trousers and in my shoes. I was allowed to change my trousers but I did not have another pair of shoes. When they took me out of the van at the other end I had to walk in my wet shoes and felt such indignity. It was so humiliating. One of the officers apologised for what had happened afterwards but it did not change the way they had treated me.”

Mistreatment and abuse in detention continue today. The events and culture that came to light at Brook House in 2017 are – still – endemic across the UK’s detention estate and have deep systemic roots.

The government response to the Brook House Inquiry Report, published in March 2024, suggests little will be done in response to the report.  JRS UK are calling for change!

1. End the use of detention for the purpose of immigration control
2. Introduce a mandatory time limit of no more than 28 days for all those detained under immigration powers
3. The decision to detain must go before a judge
4. Accept and implement the recommendations of the Brook House Inquiry Report
5. Repeal the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and reject the expansion of detention powers within it

Learn more

On Tuesday 14th May at 5.30pm, Dr Sophie Cartwright presented her research findings. Watch the webinar recording:

Learn more

Write to your MP

Write to your MP to express your concern about immigration detention and call for change.

You can find our recommendations in our report to share with them.

Tips on writing to your MP

Write to your MP

You can use the following as talking points:

• Immigration detention is really harmful to people, and bad for society as a whole. There are better ways to manage migration.
• The findings of the Brook House Inquiry are very troubling – and JRS UK’s research, among others, makes clear that the problems the report identified haven’t been solved. Politicians must take urgent action and accept the recommendations of the Brook House Inquiry.
• Detention without time limit is especially harmful, and isn’t allowed in other contexts where people are deprived of their liberty. For as long as immigration detention is used, please support a time limit of 28 days or less.
• The Brook House Inquiry’s findings show just how troubling the expanded detention powers under the Illegal Migration Act are. We need more safeguards on detention, not fewer.

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Pray with detainees

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

Hebrews 13:3

Prayers of intercession – Detention

Pray with refugees

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