Alternatives to Child Immigration Detention: What are the options for the Coalition government?
Article
We believe the government deserves credit for confirming that they will end this inhumane and ineffective policy, and for establishing a review into alternatives to the practice. However, ending child detention clearly raises significant challenges for the government which are proving difficult to overcome.
This briefing provides some background to the developments in this area, and sets out how two important principles can and should be put into practice by the government.
Those principles are:
- first, ending the detention of children must mean ending the detention of families.
- second, the government is entitled to remove families with children from the UK once they have exhausted their rights of appeal, and any change in policy must facilitate rather than frustrate return in these circumstances.
Recommendations in the briefing paper include:
- formalising the involvement of refugee and migrant-supporting organisations
- ensuring asylum seekers are aware of the possibility of return early in the asylum process
- the use of alternatives to detention, such as tagging and reporting, and
- ensuring the government is able to enforce returns.
Related items
Who gets a good deal? Revealing public attitudes to transport in Great Britain
Transport isn’t working. That’s the message from the British public. This is especially true if you’re on a low income, disabled or living in the countryside. The cost of living crisis has exposed the shortcomings of our transport system,…Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan on TalkTV discussing AI
IPPR's Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan on TalkTV discussing his new report on the impact of generative AI on the UK labour market.Transformed by AI: How generative artificial intelligence could affect work in the UK – and how to manage it
Technological change is a good thing. It has brought exponential gains to living standards and is the foundation of modern society. Yet unmanaged technological change has always come with risks and disruptions.