kebab, order Chinese or Indian or conga at the carnival or have a Cornish pasty, think of the richness diversity brings to a community. IRCs have long periods of uneventful days, periods when nothing of significance happens and it is just going through the motions: sleep, dinner, chess ... sleep, dinner, pool and so on. Following periods of dullness, there are short periods of high intense drama, enough to compensate for the lulls in the week. One particular moment I remember vividly happened 15 minutes before bang up. One of our wing mates who did not interact much with anyone was mercilessly taunted as he had a last minute shower. Having had enough of the taunts he went over to his cell, changed into clothes, and walked over to the group that had been taunting him. No sooner had he reached them than the punches started raining on him. At this point, everyone was out of their cells watching in horror ... I (and a few others) wanted to intervene but I was advised against intervention by my cellmate who had spent about three years in prison and had been detained for more than a year. He told me you should never intervene in a prison fight, otherwise you risk ‘tagging’ yourself. So we watched helplessly for those intense five minutes as Charles was ‘jumped’. Then one of them stepped away for a second to reveal a concealed weapon, which we later found out was a shank made from a plastic fork. Charles was mercilessly ‘shanked’ in full view of CCTV. These incidents, terrifying as they were, were commonplace. We all hoped we would never be jumped but in IRCs even the slightest altercation with the wrong person could get you ‘jumped’. Then there were nightly deathly screams from people banged up with hostile cellmates, attempted suicides, detainees with mental health issues made worse by their personal circumstances, not to mention protests from people picked up in the early hours from their cells for whatever reasons. Habeas corpus was virtually unheard of in IRCs. It was quite ironic to be asked to prove my case when I did not have sufficient means of communication; the internet was heavily restricted, at the time mobile phones were not allowed, and I did not know a single person on the outside. Besides, buying change from one of the detainees to use the telephone was expensive: £3 in change could cost as much as £2 depending on how urgently you needed to make the phone call, so I was not surprised when I failed at every bail and case hearing for the whole seven months I was detained with no legal representation. At this stage my asylum case took a back seat as I just lived day to day. The duration of my detention was spent in four: IRCs Harmonsworth, Colnbrook, Dungavel, and Dover, and then there were the countless times I spent at Heathrow airport’s holding facilities. Around my fourth month into detention I was guaranteed to know enough detainees wherever I was transferred. The day I was released was one of the happiest days of life. I was at Dover IRC at the time and had to make my way to London. Seating on the train from Dover with my HMP see through bags, rough dreadlocks and a tattered IRC issue sweat suit — I had a whole triple seat to myself. Fitting comfort for a newly released asylum seeker, I thought! Nothing to do with the fact that no one would sit next to me — and this was around 5pm rush hour time. The next day after my release I registered on the electoral register and have voted in every election ever since. A legacy law that allows Commonwealth citizens to exercise their right to vote in local elections in the UK enabled me to. Just imagine if every Commonwealth asylum seeker exercised this right? Would politicians take more notice of the plight of asylum seekers? Or would the public be so outraged by this legacy law that it would have to be revised? I reserve my opinion on this one. We all hoped we would never be jumped but in IRCs even the slightest altercation with the wrong person could get you ‘jumped’. 6 On occasions, I have been called upon to support on inspections as an experienced IRC ‘service user’. I have had the privilege of gaining a holistic understanding of the challenges involved in managing high volumes of immigrants that have to be processed in IRCs some of whom have serious criminal pasts. In all honesty, I have great sympathy for staff within IRCs that have to work in these very challenging environments. Sometimes detainees will take their frustrations out on staff with no regard for consequences. One serious incident I remember at Colnbrook was when a detainee slashed an officer’s face. I have no idea what happened to the member of staff or detainee after the incident. The prison-like infrastructure in most IRCs further exacerbates the situation. In contrast, I noticed centres such as Dungavel and Dover that had more of a homestead design were more pleasant environments for both staff and detainees. I also noticed that centres with experienced staff, that is former (or present) prison officers as at Dover and long-serving locally based staff as at Dungavel, were more likely to be pleasant environments. I believe in part this was due to the Prison Service Journal Issue 205