Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre has been labelled ‘of national concern’ by Nick Hardwick, the chief prisons inspector.
At the moment, Yarl's Wood, which is managed by the private company Serco, holds more than 350 detainees, most of whom are single women (although there is also a small number of adult families and a short-term holding facility held single men). Detainees are held there while authorities try to work out their immigration status. Basically, that means women – many of them refugees and asylum seekers, fleeing rape, imprisonment and torture – are locked up while we decide if we’re going to let them stay in the country or not.
In a survey carried out by the prisons inspectorate and published this week, 54% of the women held said they felt depressed or suicidal when they first arrived at Yarl’s Wood and 45% of women said they felt unsafe, ‘due to the uncertainty of their immigration status, a poor introduction to the centre, very poor health care and having too few visible staff on the units.’
Many women at Yarl’s Wood will have suffered trauma, and yet there is no counselling service at the centre. The health care on offer to women with complex needs is described as ‘so poor it put them at risk,’ there were still too many male staff and many of those men still entered women’s rooms without knocking. Furthermore, 99 pregnant women had been detained in 2014, despite the Home Office’s policy stating pregnant women should not normally be detained.
Nick Hardwick also said that: ‘Yarl’s Wood is rightly a place of national concern. We should not make the mistake of blaming this on the staff on the ground… However, Yarl’s Wood is failing to meet the needs of the most vulnerable women held… Pregnant detainees and women with mental health problems should only be held in the most exceptional circumstances. Rule 35 should ensure that women who have been tortured or traumatised or are extremely vulnerable in other ways are not in detention. Staff should have the training and support they need to better understand the experiences of the women for whom they are responsible.’
The Yarl's Wood website, meanwhile, describes itself as having 'focus on decency and respect in all aspects of care for our residents and use continuous innovation to further improve and develop our service.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.