Shaw Review says detention process for immigration detainees in need of “urgent reform”

A ‘Review into the Welfare in detention of vulnerable persons’ has just been published by the Shaw Review.  The report made 64 recommendations including:

 

• The Home Office should prepare and publish a strategic plan for immigration detention.
• The Home Office should review the adequacy of the numbers of immigration staff embedded in all prisons.
• People with Learning Difficulties should be presumed unsuitable for detention.
• The Home Office and the Department of Health work together to consider whether current arrangements for safeguarding are adequate.
• All caseworkers should meet detainees on whom they are taking decisions or writing monthly detention reviews at least once. The meeting should be face-to-face, or by video link, or by telephone.
• The Home Office should give further consideration to ways of strengthening the legal safeguards against excessive length of detention.
• The Home Office should investigate the development of alternatives to detention.
• The Home Office should consider how far electronic monitoring can contribute to the goal of fair and efficient border control.

 

Read the review

Read the Minister of State’s response to the review