Developing a Measure of the Quality of Life in Detention1 Dr Mary Bosworth is a Reader in Criminology at the University of Oxford, and, concurrently, Professor of Criminology at Montash University, Australia and Dr Blerina Kellezi is a Research Fellow and Study Coordinator in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham. Introduction Over the past ten years, the size of the immigration detention population in the UK has grown steadily. Though small in proportion to the numbers in prison, the sum of people in detention has expanded from a capacity of 250 in 1993 to more than 10 times that number today.2 Most detainees are held in one of ten Immigration Removal Centres, with about 100 individuals placed in short term holding facilities at ports.3 These removal centres are typically located in the South of the country near Gatwick and Heathrow airports, although there is one centre in Scotland, IRC Dungavel. Despite considerable public and political debate about such places, IRCs have not been the subject of much independent academic research. As a result, and in contrast to prisons, where there is an extensive scholarly tradition of investigation, almost all of what we know about the day-to-day life of detention centres is produced by NGOS and the occasional journalist. Work of this kind, particularly that produced by the HM Prison Inspectorate and the IMB, that is based largely on detainee perspective, tells us a great. In this article we hope to add to that material by describing findings from the first national study of life in detention. 4 Specifically we will detail emerging findings from a survey measure that we designed and tested between November 2009 and June 2011.5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 10 Notwithstanding hard work from a number of individual removal centre and UKBA staff, the survey reveals worrying levels of depression among detainees and ongoing concerns about healthcare and regime provision. Detainees appear to differentiate among the centres on various parameters, while certain groups in all centres are more negative about their quality of life than others. On the positive side, most detainees perceive their treatment by custodial staff positively, although the same cannot be said about their views on immigration staff. The questionnaire is an adaptation of the Measure of Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) (Liebling, 2004) that has been developed for use in immigration removal centres. As such it seeks to measures detainee perceptions of a range of aspects of life in detention as well as the progress of their immigration case, their mental health and their quality of life. This is the first time it has been systematically applied and its findings are preliminary. However, some important issues have been identified which deserve greater scrutiny. As the questionnaire is applied further it will be extended and refined. This will be an on-going process and one that will benefit from further discussion with detainees and staff. Overview Between November 2009 and June 2010 Mary Bosworth designed, tested and piloted the Measure of This research was funded by a British Academy Research Development Award, the Nuffield Foundation and the OUP John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford. We would like to thank Alan Kittle, formerly Head of the Returns Directorate at UKBA for facilitating this research project, as well as all the centre managers who opened the doors of their establishments. We would also like to thank the staff and detainees with whom we worked and John Dring for early guidance in developing the project. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Alison Liebling and members of the Prison Service Standards Audit Department for supplying us with copies of the MQPL and discussing strategies for adapting it to the detention environment. Others who assisted in administering the survey and provided general research assistance include: Emma Kaufman, Bonnie Ernst, Angela Sherwood, Ana Aliverti, Gavin Slade, Tadeusz Jones and Marie Segrave. Bacon, C. (2005).‘The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private Prison Companies’. RSC Working Paper Series, (27): 1-36. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/immigration-asylumresearch/immigration-q4-2011/ Additional numbers are held post-sentence in prison or in police cells awaiting transfer to an IRC. See also, Bosworth, M. (2012). ‘Subjectivity and identity in detention: Punishment and society in a Global Age.’ Theoretical Criminology. 16(3): 123 – 140 and Bosworth, M. (forthcoming, 2014). Inside Immigration Detention: Foreigners in a Carceral Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For the full report see Bosworth, M. and B. Kellezi. (2012). Quality of Life in Detention: Results from the MQLD Questionnaire Data Collected in IRC Yarl’s Wood, IRC Tinsley House and IRC Brook House, August 2010 – June 2011. Oxford: Centre for Criminology. Available at: www.borderobservatory.org. Prison Service Journal Issue 205