Yarl's Wood - A "National Disgrace"

The Chief Prison Inspector has concluded that the women's immigration detention centre "Yarl’s Wood" is a "national disgrace."  In a detailed report, he found that the healthcare system (run by G4S Justice) had deteriorated "severely" and that a pregnant woman presenting with pain in early pregnancy, for which a free woman would be immediately admitted to hospital, was sent away with paracetamol.

Pregnant women should not even be detained, yet 99 pregnant women had been detained with only nine of them ultimately removed from the UK.

Both male and female staff continued to enter women's rooms without knocking and there were insufficient female staff - of particular concern when set against the history of male violence reported by so many detainees.

Feminism in London joins the calls from other women's and migrants' groups for a time limit on administrative detention.  It is beyond appalling that women who have been convicted of no crime continue to be held without charge, trial or time limit, in conditions such as these.