Who'd want to be a detainee?

The annual report for 2006/2007, published yesterday by the BIA Complaints Audit Committee, makes pretty devastating reading and confirms what NCADC and other NGO's, have been saying all along about the mishandling or not handling at all, of complaints from detainees in immigration detention.

• Posted on Nov 19, 2007

Below are some extracts from the report, compiled by the NCADC. NCADC feel strongly that the report speaks for itself and needs no comment from them.

Border and Immigration Agency *Complaints Audit Committee, Annual Report for 2006/7

"I do not believe that IND is truly impartial. It will take the word of an Immigration Officer or Detention Centre Employee over that of the Detainee."

"As part of our quarterly audits this past year, we have become increasingly concerned at the weaknesses of systems and procedures for recording, tracking and managing formal complaints and for quality assuring management information. As a result, we conducted a forensic audit of misconduct complaints, which identified upwards of 20% of missing records for which we have sought an explanation."

"The need for fundamental changes to the way BIA manages complaints has been reinforced by our audit findings. In the past year only 29% of cases alleging misconduct by named officials and contract staff were handled in time. Investigations into these misconduct complaints have in our assessment remained poor. Only 8% of complainants were interviewed, thus kicking off an inequitable consideration of the complaint. We found that 89% of investigations were neither balanced nor thorough, and that as a consequence, 83% of replies were indefensible."

"We are pleased that the Operational Support Unit (OSU) and the Executive Board have responded positively to the HOAA recommendations. However, we remain firmly of the view that risks to life, limb and reputation would be substantially mitigated if investigations were undertaken entirely independently of contractors by properly selected, trained and supervised BIA officials who have no operational remit in regard to selecting contractors, monitoring contracts or managing arrest, escort and removal activities. "

"I do not believe that IND is truly impartial. It will take the word of an Immigration Officer or Detention Centre Employee over that of the Detainee."

"The main complainant was not interviewed and given the chance to counter the version given by the IO in response to the complaint."

"Serious complaint of assault should not take 12 months to consider, also response did not cover all areas in sufficient detail."

"Complainants need to be interviewed about their complaint - otherwise the investigation is one sided, and cannot be impartial."

"Their investigation of my complaint was just a report of what the Immigration Officer said. I wanted them to dig a bit deeper into the matter."

"More weighting was given to evidence given by staff than that given by the customer."

"The complaint investigation consisted of simply taking a note of the Officers account and time; appeared to be no analysis and evidence that could have been probative of the complaint."

"Response did not seem to believe the constituent's complaint was valid and did side with IND staff and contractors seemingly without question." MP responding to Customer Survey

A fundamental cause of poor complaints management has been the involvement of contractors in the investigation of serious allegations against their own staff. In the past year 95% of the cases which we audited were investigated by contract staff. In most of these cases Immigration Service contract monitors and the OSU failed to enforce deadlines and failed to supervise contract staff effectively.

We were concerned to learn that when HM Chief Inspector of Prisons detention centre team inspected Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre, they discovered three serious assault complaints which had been withdrawn for no stated reason.

*Complaints Audit Committee
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/aboutus/reports/cac

The Home Secretary has appointed a Complaints Audit Committee to monitor the Border and Immigration Agency's procedures for investigating complaints about the conduct of staff to see that they are fair and effective. The Committee is entirely independent of the Agency.

The Committee meet regularly with the Complaints Units, reviews complaints and provides feedback to the senior managers in the Agency. Committee members have access to all papers on complaint investigations, but are not involved in the investigation of complaint or decisions in individual cases.

The Committee reports to the Home Secretary and can recommend improvements to the Agency's service. The Committee publishes a comprehensive annual report.

Agency Complaints Audit Committee, Annual Report for 2006/7
Complaints Audit Committee report 2006-2007 (676 Kb)

Border And Immigration Agency Response To report
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/6353/aboutus/cacresponses0607.pdf

Source for this Message:
Complaints Audit Committee
NCADC

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