Good afternoon, everybody. Had a bit of a flu.
So flu, my voice is somewhat clear and I don't go into it coughing [INAUDIBLE].
So I'm glad to be here and have the opportunity to talk a bit about my research that I'm undertaking about the Centre for Criminology here at Oxford.
And my work is going to be a bit different than the some of the stuff we've been talking about before today and in particular even on this panel.
The vast majority of the people who are in detention will actually be in detention itself, is not part of the criminal justice system.
That's an administrative sort of arm of the government related to immigration.
So it's not the people that are in detention aren't facing punishment.
And there are sort of utilitarian justifications for their detention in terms of trying to
produce good citizen subjects or rehabilitate people or reintegrate them into the community.
So some of the things I'm talking about don't quite line up,
but I do really appreciate the previous speakers in terms of getting into the topics around well-being, around vulnerability and around mental health.
So I'm going to start by giving some background on immigration detention in the UK.
For those of you who might not be so familiar at the moment, we have nine detention centres called immigration removal centres or irises.
There's about a 3566 event space capacity and in 2015 32,466 people were entered
detention at some point and about usually around 15% of these are women.
And the top nationalities in terms of the main countries of origin are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria,
which I think says a lot about the impacts of British Empire and patterns of colonial and post-colonial migration as well,
and as well as in the way in which post-war immigration policies work to tie race and nationality and processes of inclusion and exclusion.
So there are a variety of people who are detained in detention. When I was doing my fieldwork, the detained fast track was still ongoing.
But it's still possible for asylum seekers to be detained.
There's also foreign national ex prisoners. There's visa overstayers, foreign nationals with visa problems.
So when I was doing my fieldwork, there were a lot of students, particularly from India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan, and there's also undocumented migrants and detention.
Really, the main reasons are administrative. This is to determine identity, to prevent absconding and to facilitate removal.
And with the sort of rename from detention centres to removal centres,
this idea that these places are sort of one's last stop on their migratory path and that they're going to be ejected from the country from there,
kind of underscores this notion of facilitating removal.
And in terms of how people leave detention, the UK does distinguish between removal itself and deportation,
which are the latter, which applies to people who've been convicted of criminal offences.
Some may agree to return voluntarily.
Usually voluntary and, you know, square courts, because often from the confines of detention, we can question how voluntary such decisions are.
Other people are released to the UK, usually over half, and have been released to the UK on some form of status.
This could be temporary admission immigration bail or they could have received regularise status such as having their immigration case determined.
Such as maybe this is a successful asylum application.
So some of what I'm talking about today has come in are based on my current research project,
which in which I spent about 150 days conducting ethnographic research in four detention centres in the UK.
August so September 2013 to August 2014.
So I did also did some interviews and focus groups as well as a survey that measured the quality of life in detention.
And I've also been doing post detention field work, but I won't talk about that today.
So with this study not having been particularly interested in questions of mental health,
but they definitely emerged as important to the lived experience of detention.
I primarily was concerned with talking to detainees about their experiences of being detained,
as well as why they migrated to the UK in the first place.
Their histories, their or hearsay, how they feel about home, their identity and questions around belonging.
But issues are around mental health and well-being definitely emerged and sort of aspects of day to day life and dealing with the ever,
ever present threat of removal or deportation.
And this eviction from the country that people were facing, as I briefly mentioned,
the survey has been developed by Mary Bosworth and Lorina KALAZI based on one
that Alison Liebling has developed to measure the quality of life in prisons.
And they've developed, pardon me, adapted it to the context of detention.
So during my fieldwork I administered a couple hundred surveys and Marianne Ballerina did the analysis.
And from that they found that there are very high levels of depression among those that completed the survey meeting.
I have to look up the terminology here.
The HHS field, which is the Hopkins symptom checklist criteria for depression, an abbreviated form of this is in the survey.
And they found that higher levels of depression were reported by women overall, by asylum seekers.
And again, during my fieldwork, I was also talking to people on detained fast track,
which meant that they had to be detained as part of their asylum process.
And people with health problems also reported higher levels of detention, depression, pardon me.
Those who stayed in the rooms are isolated and longer term detainees, as well as those who hadn't been to prison prior to detention.
And.
The survey found that the higher levels of depression related to more negative evaluations of their well-being and their quality of life dimensions.
So this could be things like their feeling of dignity, their safety, perceptions of staff decency,
whether they thought immigration itself was organised and consistent or efficient or fair on the health care they received,
as well as their interactions with staff and any help it needed.
Now the Home Office itself recognises through its own policies that particular individuals such as pregnant women,
elderly people and torture surveyed survivors have what they call special needs and should only be detained in exceptional circumstances.
Yet many do end up being detained with, I would argue, administrative convenience.
Winning out over concerns about such needs are issues.
Now there are a variety of factors that contribute to poor mental health in detention, and I think many of these are, if not all,
related to structural aspects of detention itself or the broader social context,
economic context in which detainees or where people come from basically, and why they migrate.
And so as I do present this sort of as a list,
and I think the factor should be thought of as dynamic and intersecting rather than static or
isolated and might apply to sometimes at one point they might apply in groups to different people.
It just depends. But for the sake of simplicity, I've kind of itemised that here.
So I think one of the probably most important aspects of detention in the UK that affects
mental health or relates to poor mental health outcomes is the uncertainty of detention.
So there is no length or statutory length.
There's no statutory limit on the length of time that someone can be detained.
So that means detention is indefinite. People don't know when they're going to be released, and they also don't know how they're going to be released.
So if they're going to be successful in their immigration cases or they're going to be removed or deported.
So this uncertainty is experienced, is highly distressing with participants I spoke to frequently referring to
detention due to this uncertainty as a form of mental or psychological torture.
So one of my participants and Kansfield house, he kind of described it this way of being stuck where you can't move,
you don't know what's going to happen in the future. You can't go back to the past.
You're just stuck in this place and you don't know. And he says that drives people crazy.
And I think that's a very, you know, spot on observation from what I was also seen in detention.
And detainees also bring with them different pre-existing vulnerabilities,
such as mental health issues, their experiences of torture or sexual or gender violence,
and these factors often compounded in detention, and that can really negatively impact their mental health.
And there's also issues around health, pre-existing health needs.
When I was doing work in Charlesworth, there are a lot of women who are pregnant and that was extremely distressing for
them being able to meet just basic nutritional needs for themselves and also deal
with worry about the stress that sorry worry at that the stress of detention could
cause miscarriages and just not knowing what's going to happen in that regard.
There's also issues around isolation due to language, disability, culture or sexuality.
So among some of the participants I talked to who identified as gay or lesbian.
Often some isolated themselves due to homophobic bullying in some of the centres.
And that was also very distressing. And there were also issues around just mobility for individuals that were mobility impaired,
trying to get to different activities that they would need to staff in order to access things like a lift that weren't very readily available.
And quickly here, I mean, there's financial interpersonal stress.
I mean, generally, people that end up in detention tend to be more poor than those who don't.
And session itself caused a lot of stress in terms of people losing their jobs, being separated from their families,
including their children and partners, their loved ones and their communities.
I think another big issue that relates to one's mental health is a perception of injustice and illegitimacy around detention,
around deportation, around their treatment more generally.
And this can negatively impact mental health producing feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger and as well as grief.
One of my participants at Colebrook right here, he you know, he he felt his treatment was unjust.
And he was sort of very powerfully arguing that that this is his life that is, you know, on hold being ruined and his and his case.
And he couldn't really believe that it would be fair for someone for that whole office to separate him from his family,
from the sort of only place he's known since he's been a kid and not give him a second chance.
And this this issue of not being given a second chance for him, really, he struggled trying not to be too depressed about it.
We also have things around issues around the length of detention and multiple detentions that cause stress.
People might cycle in and out of detention on multiple occasions or be there for long periods of time.
Some of the participants I spoke to,
I think the longest person had been there in detention for three years and how that weighs on your mental health over time.
Others, unfortunately, witnessed traumatic events in detention.
Some participants I spoke with had had witnessed suicide attempts and self-harm,
which is very upsetting for them as they try to struggle and help people, you know, by cutting down ropes or helping people that may be bleeding.
And that's very, very upsetting. There's also the fear of removal,
and it's not uncommon for people who are going to be given a ticket or removal directions to be put in
segregation or to be put on some form of 24 hour watch to make sure that they don't harm themselves.
And this happened to one of my participants at Dover, and this is an excerpt from my field notes.
I went to visit this man friend in the segregation unit at Dover after he'd been given a ticket.
And so I sort of describe here my experience of going into the segregation unit,
where he's sitting in a cell that's got a plastic kind of Plexiglas door, and he comes in to talk to me and just this looks so ruined.
So I talk about my notes, how he's, you know, it looks in rough shape.
And he explains that he's tried to kill himself by taking all this medication, and yet still he can't sleep,
even though he's on anti-depressants and, you know, these sorts of the fear of removal for him.
He felt that if you went back to Trinidad and Tobago, that given the high rates of crime there, he would likely be killed.
And he really worried about that. And for many and he's not the only one saying and maybe the truth or not of it is a different story,
but people sometimes at the time feel that they would rather die and here in the UK in detention and go back.
So it can be very, very upsetting for people to be given a ticket.
So unfortunately the list isn't exhaustive,
but I think try to draw your attention to some of the more common factors that contribute to poor mental health in detention.
So without trying to paint too gloomy a picture because I know Caroline doesn't like that kind of thing.
Human beings are obviously remarkably resilient and we do make do the best we can in difficult situations, not of our choosing.
And although I did speak to a few people in detention that actually found detention to be a really great experience,
most people did suffer in some ways and really focussed on coping.
Some were more resilient and had better ability to do this than others.
And so a lot of people cope by keeping busy, going to the gym, doing arts and crafts,
undertaking paid employment at the centres, going to the library, playing pool and other games.
And one of my participants, Michael, who's depicted here by the artist Themes Talk.
He tried to keep himself occupied and stay headstrong by playing his PlayStation three and listening to music on his stereos.
And others cope through going to the mosque or prayer room,
as well as holding individual prayer sessions and rooms or other residential spaces for one participant, Mary Jane.
Faith was very, very important for her. She felt that if she didn't have God, that she would go crazy.
So that was where her source of strength and coping and resilience came from.
Others look to their peers peer supports.
Among other detainees, some turn to staff. There were a lot of people I talked to youth who are on medication often
prescribed by the centres in terms of their antidepressants and sleeping tablets.
Others self-medicated through illicit drugs within the centres such as cannabis or the so-called legal highs of spice.
Some got support from their family and friends. Others turned to volunteer visitors as a way to cope, and some took to protest.
This could be just writing letters and more, I guess,
direct action in terms of hunger strikes or sit downs as a way to assert some
kind of agency and to have maintain some type of control over their lives.
So it's really not an all novel argument to say that immigration detention
can exacerbate pre-existing mental health issues as well as produce new ones.
I think these are just some examples, but perceptions of injustice,
the uncertainty can really kind of work and feed into a sort of cycle of depression and anxiety, both during detention and after release.
And indeed, some of my participants who've been removed or released talk to me about
experiencing nightmares related to their detention that lasted for several months.
So the impacts can be quite great. And this isn't a particular surprise to the British government or to the Home Office.
It's quite aware of the mental health concerns related to immigration detention and about the sort of the so-called pardon me,
the detention of so-called vulnerable groups. So since February last year, there's been a number of different reports.
The last most recent one, The Star Review, in January 2016,
which is the 350 page report that really looks roughly into this issue of the detention of all vulnerable persons.
And Mary Bosworth has a literature review. She contributed to that, which is on the Border Chronologies Association,
which provides a good summary of the literature in relation to mental health in detention, if anyone is interested.
But I think here we can see this, that there is this growing interest in improving the mental health of detainees,
as well as limiting the detention of those that are deemed vulnerable.
And I think this can range from genuine concerns about actual well-being to more to issues around system inefficiencies,
as well as the desire to reduce legal risks brought about through expensive or embarrassing
litigation over human rights breaches that the UK government has in fact occurred.
And so from one at a time,
I just haven't quite got a chance to really talk about this issue much detail and I appreciate Mary's
presentation that really it was trying to problematise this idea about vulnerability and what do we mean by it.
And it's sort of highlighting this trend and talking about mental health and vulnerability.
I don't want to suggest that the government or INGOs or activists or academics should
refrain from raising issues about vulnerability or mental health in detention.
Rather, I guess I'm concerned that in this context,
it's also important to be alert to governmental attempts to deploy discourses of vulnerability to pursue other political interests,
such as the maintenance of detention for detainee populations who are deemed not vulnerable.
So I'm interested in how we can talk about vulnerability in relation to immigration detention without recreating
categories of detainees who are seen as less or more deserving of or resilient to this form of confinement.
So I'm wondering if we're seeing a governmental preoccupation with vulnerability and mental health as a way
to reform the system of immigration detention without challenging its underlying structure and practices,
which inevitably, inevitably wear on people's mental health and test their resilience.
So I think in the current context, as the government works on reforming the system of detention,
that it's important to interrogate the power relationships that underpin who gets defined as vulnerable and then those who don't.
Iris Merryn Young is really challenge this idea that vulnerability is more exceptional than normal.
And I think some of the presenters here today have noted that we all face different vulnerabilities.
We all have mental health issues or needs and that sort of those who get recognised.
I think there's questions of power there and that's important to consider. So thank you very much.