This is the question we’d love to know the answer to! A vale of secrecy hangs over the IRC and its workings. Who’s employed there? How many women enter its doors every week? How far have they come from? And why are they imprisoned?
HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE DO KNOW – AND YOU MIGHT WANT TO .
- Did you know that eye watering sums of money have been given, first to private contractor Mitie and currently to Serco, to run the facility for up to ten years? That’s OUR money
- Did you know that women incarcerated in the IRC are given no end date for release and this increases their level of suffering enormously?
- Did you know that the IRC has never run at much more than half capacity?
Take a look at this film, freely viewable on YouTube. It comes from the summer of 2015, when the buildings were used by the Hassockfield Secure Training Centre.
Ever since the IRC opened we have campaigned for its closure – we knew its inaccessible location and completely inadequate broadband and mobile signals would cause untold problems.
We also knew the women would be isolated from any towns and cities with provision for refugees, so there would be difficulties setting up the legally required services.
And Home Office ministers also know about these deficiencies – only two years after its opening and two damning official reports, they’ve decided to change the facility to a men-only detention centre, almost doubling its capacity.
HERE’S WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
- We don’t know how and when the announced change of use will happen.
- We don’t know how the original problems of isolation and bad connectivity will be solved – presuming they will cause the same hardships for young men as for women.
- We don’t know whether there’s a plan to adequately cater for women brought to alternative centres.
- We don’t know how much money was wasted by our government in turning the all-male facility of 2021 into an all-female one, and now transforming the existing facility back again.
We’ll be continuing our demonstrations outside the gates for as long as it takes to SHUT IT DOWN!
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