On Saturday 27th November, hundreds of people gathered outside Campsfield Removal Centre, in Kidlington, Oxford, to protest against the fact that it still exists. Refugees and migrants have been detained in Campsfield for the last eleven years. Since it opened Campsfield has been privately run by Group Four, notorious for racism, cruelty and general incompetence. For more information, see the CW Group 4 profile, back issues of Corporate Watch, and the Guardian.

In May 2004 it was announced that Global Solutions Limited (GSL), the section of Group 4 that runs Campsfield, was to be bought by two venture capital companies[1], Englefield Capital and Electra Partners Europe, meaning that there will be an even greater focus than usual on making money out of the detention facilities it manages. GSL is especially proud of its work in the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) sectors – ie work with government bodies on privatising (or 'outsourcing') public services such as schools, hospitals and prisons. The company operates prisons and detention centres, among other services, in Britain, Australia and South Africa.

Campsfield's eleventh anniversary comes just after the Home Office has given the go-ahead to another detention centre in Oxfordshire, just outside Bicester. This one will be the first of a controversial new scheme of 'accommodation centres', where asylum seekers will be kept while their claims are processed. The centre is supposed to be run along the lines of an open prison, although it sounds as though its location will make it very difficult for inmates to go anywhere else. It will have the capacity to accommodate 750 men, women and children. GSL has been given a ten-year contract to run the new centre, which will be built by Carillion. Carillion was created by enthusiastic road-builder Tarmac in 1999. It shares with GSL a history of investment in PFI/PPP schemes (see Corporte Watch's profile on the UK construction industry), and is listed on GSL's website as a 'partner'.

The New Labour government is a keen advocate of PFI/PPPs, continuing where the Tories left off in outsourcing as many public services as possible to private companies. Aside from the fact that these prisons shouldn't exist at all, privatising them leaves the prisoners particularly vulnerable to abuse, as Group 4/GSL's experiences at Campsfield and Yarl's Wood have shown. And as soon running prisons becomes a profit-making activity, it is in someone's interests that as many people as possible are in them. This is evident from the American experience, where prison privatisation has already gone much further than it has here and one advocate is quoted saying: 'It's like a hotel with a guaranteed occupancy'[2].

In the UK, one of the ways in which detainees are affected by the many layers of bureaucracy between the Home Office and various private companies is that they are moved around between prisons, making it hard for them to maintain contact with friends, family members and lawyers, as well as being generally exhausting. By law the Immigration Service is allowed to move detainees between centres at very short notice and for no particular reason, and their legal representatives are not always told where they have been moved to, making bail applications and appeals against removal even more difficult.

Campsfield seems to have a particularly high turnover of people at the moment. One source described an incident in which someone was moved from Campsfield to Dungavel (detention centre in Scotland run by Premier Detention Services) and back the next day. There have also been reports concerning GSL's definition of 'appropriate force' exerted on detainees who resist removal, including someone who claimed to have had an arm and a leg broken.

The Bicester Refugee Support group was campaigning against the building of the centre. Now that it looks certain to go ahead, the group is focusing on promoting the rights of asylum seekers and looking for ways to support them when they arrive, working with Asylum Welcome.
www.asylum-welcome.supanet.com/
www.bicesterrefugeesupport.org.uk

There are monthly demos outside Campsfield detention centre on the last Saturday of every month, see www.closecampsfield.org.uk

On 25th September 2004, 1105 people were detained in this country under the Immigration Act of 2000. Times they had spent in detention ranged from just days to over a year[3][4]. Campsfield has the capacity to hold 180 inmates. The Home Office currently has plans to expand it to hold 300.

GSL is involved in running other prisons and detention centres including Yarls Wood, Oakington, Tinsley House, and HMP Altcourse. Look out for a new profile on the company coming soon to the Corporate Watch website. In the meantime, our favourite quote from GSL Australia: 'Mandatory detention is not imprisonment.'

'As soon as I saw it was a prison, I was very, very sad and depressed. I couldn't believe that they put me there. You don't know what will happen to you next. You just live like an animal. You just wait. You don't know about tomorrow, or after tomorrow.' (former Campsfield detainee, Radio 4, 20/10/94).

Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) works with detained migrants.
www.biduk.org/index.htm

References
[1] An investment company that invests its shareholders' money in new companies and other risky but potentially very profitable ventures. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,,184657,00.html

[2] Ron Garzini, US private prison booster, quoted in Christian Parenti 'Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis'.

[3] More info can be accessed from www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/asylumq304.pdf

[4] Campaigners point out that these are probably statistics for the length of someone's stay in a particular establishment, not the whole time they have spent in detention.