1st Mar 2016 06:39
LONDON (Alliance News) - Outsourcer Mitie Group PLC has come under fire over its management of the Harmondsworth immigration detention centre after the UK prison inspector said the facilities were "dirty", "rundown" and "insanitary".
HM Inspectorate of Prisons said many of the concerns it had identified at the centre when it last inspected it back in 2013 have not been rectified and, in some cases, have deteriorated.
The inspectorate found nearly half the men held at the centre, the largest immigration detention centre in Europe, said they felt depressed or suicidal on arrival and the early risk assessments carried out were "not good enough".
Some detainees were segregated too long, without assurance this measure was justified, while some of the newer accommodation at the site was "dirty and rundown", while many toilets and showers in the older units were " in a seriously insanitary condition".
The inspectorate acknowledged a programme to improve the conditions was underway, but said the centre should not have been allowed to reach this state.
"While this report describes some good work, it highlights substantial concerns in most of our tests of a healthy custodial establishment. While the state of drift that we described in our last report has been arrested and the direction of travel is now positive, it is unacceptable that conditions were allowed to decline so much towards the end of the last contract," said Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke .
"Following the inspection, we were informed by the Home Office that lessons had been learned and that a new set of principles were established to prevent a recurrence of this situation. We will assess the success of these measurements in due course," Clarke added.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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