Editorial Comment The imprisonment and detention of foreign nationals has increased substantially in recent years. Immigration detention places have grown twelve-fold in the last 20 years, while the number of foreign national prisoners has more than doubled. Currently, around 11,000 foreign nationals are held in English and Welsh prisons, including around 600 immigration detainees. An additional 3,000 people, many with no criminal record, are placed in immigration removal centres1. Many prison staff will be aware of the stress and uncertainties foreign national prisoners experience as they near the end of their sentence. They are often confused about what is going to happen to them next and, if they are detained, they enter a kind of limbo. They are neither in the country nor out, unsure whether they will be released or removed, or when they will see progress on their cases. The contrast with the generally rigid certainties of ‘normal’ prison life is stark as people’s lives become dominated by attempts to navigate a complex immigration system, often with inadequate specialist advice. This edition aims to broaden understanding of detention in the UK and abroad, with articles exploring life in detention and the politics of immigration control in the UK and abroad. The edition is framed by Kizza Musinguzi’s absorbing personal account, a man detained (as it turns out, unnecessarily) after fleeing persecution in his home country. Musinguzi offers insights into the day-to-day experience of someone subject to immigration control and detention. Details such as his first impressions of the detention centre, and the kindness of individual staff and fellow detainees, stand out in this thoughtful and fair-minded essay. If there is only one article that you read fully in this edition, it should probably be this one. It is followed by interviews with Karen Abdel-Hady and Jo Henney, respectively deputy director and Head of Detention Operations, in the Returns Directorate, Enforcement and Crime Group at UKBA, and centre manager at Harmondsworth, the UK’s largest immigration removal centre. They describe the challenges and satisfactions of some of the most responsible positions in the detention estate. The MQPL (measuring the quality of prison life) survey tool has become firmly established in prisons as an effective way of finding out about prisoners’ experiences. In a logical step forward, a similar approach is being developed in detention. Mary 1. 2 Bosworth and Blerina Kellezi discuss emerging findings from their MQLD (‘Measuring the quality of life in detention’) survey conducted in several immigration centres. A key finding is the exceptionally high level of depression reported by detainees. Both staff and detainees identified the open-ended nature of immigration detention and the cumbersome immigration decision-making process as factors contributing substantially to such feelings. A broader perspective is taken by Judi Moylan, an Australian member of parliament with a long-standing interest in her country’s approach to immigration control. Her paper illustrates the strongly politicised nature of immigration control, as she narrates the evolution of immigration debate from an unabashed ‘White Australia’ policy to current concerns about the number of people who continue to arrive, and die, in boats. She discusses the use of off-shore detention and the fact that a thousand children continue to be detained in Australia, contrary to the country’s own guidelines and international law. Three years ago, it was not uncommon for the UK also to detain 1000 or more children a year. There has been a substantial reduction in numbers since, mainly as a result of a change of policy by the coalition government. Hindpal Singh Bhui critically assesses contemporary child detention practices in the UK in light of this, arguing that the new and substantially improved approach may contain important learning for the management of adult detention. He echoes the concerns over the open-ended nature of detention revealed in Bosworth and Kellezi’s piece, and argues that the most important lesson may be the rejection of previous assumptions about the need for indefinite detention to achieve effective immigration control. Children are held for no longer than a week, and there seems little reason why time limits cannot now be discussed for adult detainees. The politics of immigration control is a theme in Lea Sitkin’s paper on the distinct approaches to immigration control in Britain and Germany. Sitkin identifies several reasons for policy differences including geography. Britain’s island status means that it is easier to stop people at points of entry, while Germany’s more vulnerable land borders mean that more effort is put into identifying illegal entrants when they are already inside the country. She also considers the influence on policy of Britain’s colonial history and multi-cultural HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (HMIP and ICIBI) (2012) The Effectiveness and Impact of Immigration Detainee Casework. A Joint Thematic Review. Prison Service Journal Issue 205