In the fight to end detention, we must leave no one behind

I am responding to the Walking Inquiry’s question, ‘What is our response?’ The Walking Inquiry, and GDWG’s tireless advocacy and campaigning, have powerfully underscored the harms of detention to individuals and society, and the fundamental injustice of locking people up without time limit for immigration purposes.

Our response can only be to demand an end to detention – for everyone. And the ‘for everyone’ is vital, as there is a risk that some people are excluded in the current moves towards detention reform. It is an important step in the right direction that Labour committed to a time limit on detention in its last manifesto, and that the Conservatives have recognised the need to reduce detention – but these political commitments exclude the detention of people with convictions.

I am a former GDWG caseworker and university researcher, and am currently collaborating with GDWG on a research project exploring the processes by which people face detention and deportation as a result of time in prison or contact with the police. The majority of people in detention are in this situation; and people with convictions spend on average much longer in detention than other groups. In my research I have spoken with people who came to the UK as children, got into trouble with the police as teenagers, and found themselves facing deportation to a country they barely remember. I have spoken to an asylum seeker given a prison sentence for touching the rudder of the boat he was in crossing the English Channel. I have spoken to a survivor of modern slavery convicted for work he was forced to do by his traffickers. All of these people have served their time; and then experienced the ‘double punishment’ of detention, sometimes spending longer in detention than their original prison sentence. This is wrong, and we must stand up and say it is wrong. Locking people without time limit for immigration purposes can never be justified, for anyone. In the fight to end detention, we must leave no one behind.

Lauren Cape-Davenhill