A new report by the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) found that Home Office staff routinely misused force against vulnerable migrants in detention.
Entitled, By Force of Habit, its findings draw attention to how immigration detention has lost sight of necessity and dignity in its use of force.
IMB national chair, Elisabeth Davies said:
The findings of this report are deeply concerning. For the use of force to be lawful, it must be necessary, reasonable, proportionate and justifiable, but what we are seeing is a system where restraint has become routine, oversight is weak, and the dignity of detained individuals is too often disregarded.
The Brook House inquiry showed how abuse can flourish when warning signs are ignored and toxic cultures take hold. Worryingly, this report highlights that the Home Office is still not doing enough to prevent such failures from happening again. Without urgent attention to the culture within detention settings, the rights and dignity of those held risk being further eroded.
We need meaningful cultural change and robust accountability to protect the rights of highly vulnerable people in detention. As National Chair, I call on the Home Office to act urgently to strengthen oversight, embed trauma-informed practices, and ensure that force is only used when absolutely necessary.
Independent Monitoring Boards
IMBs are appointed by ministers to oversee the treatment of people detained in custody.
There are IMBs in every prison and immigration removal centre. Their purpose is to ensure treatment across all detention facilities is fair, just and humane — though in practice, they often highlight the injustices of the detention system.
‘Force’ — as defined in the reports — refers to any physical intervention, including restraints and handcuffs, used on another person. While the IMB adopts this definition, the Home Office and its contractors appear to diverge in how they understand and apply ‘force’.
Force must be necessary, reasonable, proportionate and justifiable to be considered lawful. It should only ever be the last resort once all other methods of ensuring safety have been exhausted. Moreover, the level of force must be limited to what is absolutely essential in the given situation.
The IMB has found that the Home Office and its employees consistently flout these legal requirements, often, for the sake of convenience.
Defaulting to the use of restraints
Another key finding is that the presumption against the use of restraints was routinely ignored.
The default use of restraints raises serious questions about the necessity and proportionality of their use. In particular, handcuffing had become routine — particularly during hospital transfers.
Gatwick IMB found that nearly all detained individuals were restrained for escort to hospital appointments. This included handcuffing a frail 70-year-old man, despite his paperwork noting no evidence of risk. Even so, the duty director gave approval for handcuffing, specifically citing risk on escort.
Likewise, there was a great degree of inconsistency in how restraint was applied between different home office facilitators. At Dallas Court in Manchester, staff routinely handcuffed men but not women. At Luton Airport, the IMB was told that detainees are handcuffed for escort to removal flights. However, at Manchester and Birmingham airports, the decision had been left to the discretion of contracted escort staff.
The Home Office also frequently misses opportunities to de-escalate, rather than use force. In particular, many detained individuals have little understanding of what’s happening to them due to language barriers. The lack of understanding is then read as non-compliance with orders. This leads to situations like one example in which a detained person wouldn’t stand when asked, and force was then used against them.
‘I don’t worry about what’s proportionate’
Despite many individuals in their ‘care’ being victims of torture and trafficking, a trauma-informed approach was notably absent in practice. Staff failed to follow the Vulnerable Adult Care Plan of a man with mental health difficulties. As a result, he became distressed, and the staff then used force against him.
As is typical of this kind of organisation, staff often showed little regard for proportionality or accountability at an organisational level. This included reports of training involving coercive practices and inappropriate comments. One personal protection trainer told staff:
If someone’s coming at me, I’m going to keep myself safe. I don’t worry about what’s proportionate, I won’t worry about Serco or my job, my priority is to look after myself.
Consistent with the lack of regard for accountability, detention centre staff also left gaps in their recording of the use of force. The IMBs found inaccurate and incomplete records, as well as ineffective review processes. For example, staff applied restraints including bar cuffs, a waist-restraint belt, and thigh and ankle restraints for almost five hours. A four-person team also carried twice during that timeframe. The staff cited a failure to comply as their reasoning. However, they provided no evidence that this was the case in their documentation.
‘A toxic environment’
So what did the Home Office say in response to a report into its repeated mistreatment of vulnerable people in its ‘care’? Why, it boasted about scrapping human rights and deporting migrants, of course. A spokesperson said:
Last week, the home secretary announced the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration in modern times, which will make it easier to remove and deport migrants. As part of this, we are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system.
We will carefully consider the findings in the report. The Home Office reviews all incidents of use of force to ensure that techniques are used proportionately.
Reacting to the report, the Home Office has planned two internal review, concerning the use of handcuffs and restraint use during escorts. The IMBs have stated that they eagerly await the findings.
However, this isn’t exactly the first time the Home Office has been told it’s brutalising detainees. The Brook House Inquiry, launched in 2017, highlighted the shocking abuse of migrants in the Brook House Immigration Removal Centre.
The chair of the Brook House inquiry, Kate Eves, said of the new report:
Two years after the findings of the statutory inquiry into abuse at Brook House, it is extremely concerning to see the same issues being identified. There should be no doubt that the excessive use of force, combined with a lack of robust safeguards, contributes to a toxic environment where mistreatment of vulnerable people becomes more likely.
Yesterday’s report shows that the Home Office has completely and utterly failed to learn its lessons. How, with the Home Secretary gleefully planning to remove human rights and increase immigration removals, the situation is likely to become far worse.
This post was originally published on Canary.