What we have is less a change of process than – if one were to be uncharitable – an interior design exercise. The grim and prison-like Yarl’s Wood has been replaced by the country retreat of Cedars. Families will be detained for much shorter periods. However, the numbers of children detained have not much reduced since May.
Cedars looks very different from Yarl’s Wood, inside and out, but inside it is staffed by G4S and outside there are security fences. It is inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons.
Controversially Barnardo’s, the children’s’ charity, has contracted to work with G4S and the government advising on both the fitting out and the running of Cedars. The chief executive of Barnardo’s describes Cedars as looking like an upmarket holiday resort, perhaps a bit like Center Parcs. One can see what she means, but the irony of the UK state’s willingness to extend this level of comfort and ease to would-be immigrants, many of whom will have no doubt been motivated to make their risky attempts to settle here at least partly by economic poverty, for something like an away-break, but not a life-time, will not be lost.
One regrets also that in our times our government no longer has within its own ranks the ability to envisage and implement a civilised and unintimidating environment for these people but must contract with a charity to achieve it. Likewise, it now almost passes unremarked that it must contract with a commercial organisation (much criticised for competence and humanity, but profitable none the less) to run its detention centre in all but name. The government has outsourced not only its executive functions but also its imagination. How far have we come from Victorian values and practices when the government no longer regards detention of the individual as the proper preserve of the democratic state? At least the décor has improved.
