Reflections from an expert: Freed Voice member Mishka responds to Shaw’s evidence to the Home Affairs Committee
This is a guest blog from Mishka, a member of the Freed Voices – a group of experts-by-experience calling for immigration detention reform. Mishka writes under a pseudonym. Last Tuesday, the Home Affairs Committee took evidence from Sir Stephen Shaw regarding the Government’s progress in implementing the recommendations in his first review on welfare in immigration [...]
Why a 28 day time limit on immigration detention?
Image by @Carcazan Earlier today, Sir Stephen Shaw gave oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. I was half listening to the section of the session which touched on the issue of a time limit – I will have to read it in full in Hansard later to fully understand [...]
“Everyone is vulnerable in detention”: The Bar Council calls for a time limit
Image by @Carcazan The Detention Forum is publishing a series of blogs looking at the evidence behind calls for a 28-day time limit on immigration detention. In this blog, we look at the Bar Council’s report, Injustice in Immigration Detention: Perspectives from legal professionals. Late last year, the Bar Council added [...]
Detention reform: Shaw’s progress review in context
Stephen Shaw’s follow up review on the UK’s immigration detention system – Assessment of government progress in implementing the report on the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons – was published on 24 July 2018. This was intended as a review of the progress achieved (or not) by the Home Office since Shaw’s [...]
The wait is over: The second Shaw Review is finally published
In this guest blog, originally published by Scottish Detainee Visitors, SDV director, Kate Alexander, takes a look at the follow up to 2016’s Shaw Review and presents an overview of its findings. Last week the Government finally published Sir Stephen Shaw’s follow up to his 2016 review of the welfare of vulnerable people in detention. [...]
The Detention Forum response to the Home Secretary’s statement on the Shaw Review
Earlier today, Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, made a statement to the House of Commons on immigration detention and the second Stephen Shaw review. This independent review focuses on progress made by the Home Office since the publication of Shaw’s first report in 2016 which advised that the number of people detained be [...]
The Detention Forum guide to navigating immigration detention statistics
The Home Office and Office of National Statistics regularly publish detailed tables showing the numbers of people held in immigration detention and subsequently released or removed from the UK. But what do these figures mean, and how can we use them? One way is to identify key statistics that give us some [...]
‘Don’t be like me 12 years ago, don’t walk away.’ – What you can do today to challenge immigration detention and hostile environment
Just a few nights ago, I was flicking through a very old report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights published in 2007. Its edges are frayed. Some pages still have post-it notes stuck on them. 12 years ago, I was a director of an asylum NGO and this inquiry [...]