A vulnerable 16-year-old boy has been locked away. He is sharing living quarters with adult men, none of whom have undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks. The people with authority over him are not trained in child-protection issues and have not had their backgrounds checked.
If this 16-year-old were a young offender, such a scenario would be scandalous. But according to Save the Children, some 500 young people a year are detained in these circumstances.
Their crime is that of being an asylum seeker who looks older than they are.
Rona Blackwood, assistant programme director for refugees at Save the Children, says: "Young people are being detained in an adult environment when in fact they are children. The Government is concerned that certain people are saying they are younger than they are to get preferential treatment, so if young people claim they are under 18 they may be age-assessed."
Inadequate evaluation
In some cases, immigration officers simply do this by looking at an asylum seeker, but fail to take into account factors such as that in certain cultures it is the norm for young men to wear facial hair at an earlier age.
According to Blackwood, nearly half of all asylum seekers who have their age disputed by immigration officials turn out to be under 18. But while their case is being assessed by social services they are detained with adults.
"Clearly social services are better placed to assess the age of young people," says Blackwood.
Jacques, 17, is from West Africa. He is one of the young people whose cases are highlighted in Save the Children's report into detention, No Place for a Child. Dr Heaven Crawley, author of the report, says: "Jacques was mentally vulnerable and had been through all sorts of trauma, including being tortured, before he came to the UK.
On arrival in the UK, his age was disputed, but he was not detained. Then it was decided that he should be deported, so he was taken to Harmondsworth detention centre where he spent nearly nine months."
Jacques says it was the hardest time of his life. "Prison is better than detention," he says. "In prison you have rights, but in detention you have no rights."
Bad for health
Save the Children believes that a further 2,000 children and young people are detained with their families in the UK. Many of these young people suffer a deterioration in mental and physical health, commonly experiencing problems such as insomnia and persistent coughs. They also often encounter difficulties at school.
"Some consequences are clearly long term, such as young people becoming very anxious about knocks on the door and that kind of thing," says Crawley.
The charity has now issued a list of measures that it would like the Government to introduce (see box). These include publishing detailed statistics on the number of young people held in detention, that all staff working in removal centres should undergo enhanced criminal records checks, and that young people should not be detained for more than seven days.
Blackwood believes the existing system is ripe for change. "The other day a young man in one of our groups was detained and removed," she says. "He was not given the opportunity to say goodbye to his school or college friends, or even take money out of his bank."
The No Place for a Child report can be downloaded from www.savethechild ren.org.uk/noplace
CALL TO ACTION
Save the Children is calling for the Government to:
- Treat asylum-seeking children as children first and foremost. This will involve withdrawing the Government's reservations about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Not detain children for the purpose of immigration control
- Improve age-assessment procedures. No individual whose age is disputed should be detained until an assessment is carried out by social services or an independent panel
- Make reporting mechanisms more user-friendly
- Develop alternatives to detention. The Home Office should pilot a system based on the US Appearance Assistance Programme, which encourages asylum seekers to report by providing services such as legal advice at the same time as the reporting takes place
- Improve the voluntary returns system. Information about the opportunities for returning to the country of origin should be made more widely available
- In the short term, a statutory time limit of seven days should be set on detaining young people
- Further action should be taken to reduce the transfer of young people between detention facilities
- Legal advice and representation should be available for all detainees and access to bail should be actively available and properly funded
- Detailed statistics on the immigration detention of young people and age-disputed cases should be published on a regular basis
- All staff working in removal centres should undergo enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks.
