UK: Campsfield: an unlawful regime?
01 March 1998
Sir David Ramsbotham's long-awaited report on Campsfield House immigration detention centre, published on 16 April, is a powerful indictment of the Home Office treatment of immigration detainees and asylum-seekers. Among the main criticisms of the Home Office are that the criteria for detention are not clear, detainees are given no written reasons and there is no judicial oversight of detention. People are detained for too long. There are no statutory rules for the running of the centre (which is not a prison and so does not fall within the prison rules). This means that Group 4 staff have no clear legal basis for their responsibilities and in particular have no legal basis for using disciplinary measures or physical force, save the powers available to members of the public making a citizen's arrest.
Campsfield, a high security unit bounded by 20-foot fences and electronically operated gates, was opened in November 1993 to house 200 immigration detainees, and has been condemned ever since. Local opposition, led by Oxford Trades Union Council, became the Close Down Campsfield Campaign. They have held regular Saturday pickets outside the centre and have provided constant support for detainees' numerous hunger strikes and other protests. The protests of the detainees and their supporters have been echoed by many groups including Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who believes that Britain's detention of asylum-seekers breaches the Geneva Convention.
Detainees have complained of racist attitudes among staff (Muslim detainees have complained that staff watch pornographic videos while they are trying to pray). They have claimed that staff refuse to entertain complaints and threaten to send those who persist in complaining to prison. While he was not prepared explicitly to endorse the detainees' complaints about staff racism, Ramsbotham did recommend "further training for staff to ensure that they understand and appreciate different religious cultures". He also confirmed that the complaints system was not "sufficiently rigorous" and encouraged fears of transfer to prison. He recommended the use of numbered complaints forms, a log of complaints and keeping an audit trail to ensure they could not go missing. The other main complaint Ramsbotham endorsed was the complete lack of any meaningful activities to engage in for detainees locked in the centre for months on end.
The report demands minimum standards of provision in relation to regime, facilities and conditions of detention including food, clothing, bedding, furnishings, heating, lighting, sanitation, bathing facilities, decent living accommodation, adequate space and privacy, facilities for exercise, access to fresh air and hygienic environment. He also demands that detainees' rights in relation to contact with family and freedom of religious worship be provided for.
But his main concern was that "it is frankly unsound and unsafe to hold people within a secure perimeter without clear rules and sanctions governing their behaviour and without statutory duties and obligations being imposed on the staff who look after them. It is the lack of clear rules and sanctions that is at the heart of the problems facing contracted detention centre staff." This absence of rules affects "the safety of people held in detention and the staff employed there". The only sanction against misbehaviour for detainees is removal to prison, which is "grossly inappropriate", he says.
Wrong-footed by Ramsbotham, immigration minister Mike O'Brien attempted to blame the Tories for the "legacy" of immigration detention, while at the same time promising more, not less detention of asylum-seekers. He showed particular crassness on Radio 4's World Tonight on 16 April. The programme conducted interviews with a former detainee at the centre and with a member of staff who spoke of the racism of some of his colleagues but wished to remain anonymous. The Ministe