We marked November 19th as
This year’s theme: “Zero Male Suicide”
In December 2021 the Home Office opened and renamed its new immigration removal centre for women ‘Derwentside’. We campaigners still think of it as ‘Hassockfield’, the previous name for the building’s use as a secure training centre for boys and young men. Whether it was the Home office or Mitie (contracted at huge public expense to operate the IRC), the new facility opened without attention to important aspects of humane detention, as outlined below. Will we see the same scenario repeated with Serco now in charge?
Derwentside IRC is remote, lacks any local provision of legal and migrant support services and it has poor mobile phone and internet connectivity.
These issues were echoed by the Government’s own Independent Monitoring Board and recognised by the Home Office.
If the government continues to push ahead with its new policy to put men, two to a room, in Derwentside instead of women, we’ll continue to highlight the unsuitability of the IRC for the same reasons we are opposing its current use.
Men have sons, fathers, friends, brothers, uncles, cousins, colleagues and are members of their communities.
When men, not just women, are put in immigration detention, the people around them are torn from their lives. Not surprisingly, Immigration Detention is now proven to induce serious distress and mental illness. It is retraumatising and cruel.
In 2018,research showed two people survived suicide attempts every day in UK detention centres. In 2023 there has been a spate of suicide attempts, and only 24 hours before International Men’s Day, there was an announcement from Brook House IRC that one of two desperate Albanian prisoners had died following a suicide attempt. Could Derwentside be next to make the headlines?
Zero Male Suicide will be impossible while immigration detention exists.
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