Sensemaker Daily
Britain’s largest women-only detention centre for illegal migrants will be “repurposed” into an all-male facility from next year, according to sources close to the matter.
Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), located on the site of a former young offenders centre in Durham, has faced opposition ever since it opened, as campaigners claim its remoteness and improper facilities have led to inhumane treatment.
Last year, a report by the prisons watchdog revealed nearly one in five women held at the site felt suicidal at some point while detained.
Derwentside replaced Yarl’s Wood as the UK’s main female-only detention centre in 2021, after several complaints about sexual abuse and mistreatment by staff at the Bedfordshire site.
It’s understood detainees at Derwentside will now be moved to mixed detention facilities.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We continue to look at finding alternative solutions within the immigration detention estate to further increase capacity,” and pointed to two new IRCs in Hampshire and Oxfordshire.
A letter to Durham Council from the Director of Detention services at the Home Office says that while it awaits the Supreme Court Rwanda judgement, “we must prepare our services to meet the expected increase in demand from January 2024.”
This summer Laing O’Rourke, a construction firm, won a £1.1 million contract from the government to expand existing detention centres and build new blocks using designs based on prisons.
According to the letter, the conversion of Derwentside will increase capacity by 50 beds. During its short history as an all-female IRC, the prisons watchdog found that women at risk of self-harm or suicide did not receive consistent and well-organised care and highlighted poor record keeping of violent incidents.
Kate Osbourne, the MP for a neighbouring constituency, told the Commons she had spoken to women who had spent over 200 days at the site.
In June, outsourcer Serco took over the contract to manage Derwentside from Mitie. It’s not the first time the site has had a makeover. Until 1988, it was the site of Medomsley detention centre for young offenders, which was the scene of more than 1,800 reported cases of sexual and physical abuse by staff.
“Everything that made this the wrong place for women to be detained makes it wrong for men, too,” said Owen Temple, former chair of a group campaigning against the site. “Its distance from families, from airports, from interpreters, from trained legal advisers and from capacity to support asylum seekers all remain reasons why this site should be closed.”
Photograph Alamy