The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) today released new statistics on the numbers of children, men and women detained in Australia's immigration detention centres and in communtiy detention arrangements. Here's the lowdown:
- 1,079 children (aged under 18 years) in immigration detention. Of these;
- 551 were detained in the community under residence determinations
- 528 are in secure locked facilities (133 of these on Christmas Island).
- 4,255 adults are locked in detention and a further 1,049 are in community detention.
The statistics released are dated 31 January 2012. This is the first update provided to the public since 30 November 2011. The DIAC website states:
Statistics for the number of people held in each of the immigration detention centres are updated weekly and are available online.
Techinically this means the 31 Jan update is already out of date! We have been publicly asking for this update for months and have been told things like 'it will be provided in due course' and then today as some explanation for the 10 week delay 'DIAC have been busy'! If they don't know on any given day how many people are in detention, who does! (it's not Serco's job to update the public on stats).
None of this gets to the real point - it's the Government's decision to keep these children and adults locked up. Government policy as written on the DIAC website and elsewhere states:
No children in immigration detention centres
It is government policy that children will not be held in immigration detention centres.
While there will be occasions when children will be accommodated in low-security facilities within the immigration detention network, such as immigration residential housing, immigration transit accommodation and community detention, the priority will always be that children and their families will be promptly accommodated in community detention.
This allows children and their families to move about in the community and receive support from non-government organisations and state welfare agencies, as necessary.
The stats are not entirely straightforward in terms of their presentation. DIAC's commitment is that numbers per location will be provided. This is absolutely not the case with one whole category being created in the statistics called 'Alternative Places of Detention - Mainland'. These so called APOD's include facilities like the Darwin Airport Lodge and Inverbrackie Detention Centre. There is nothing alternate about these, children are locked up, their freedom completely denied. Here's
our explanation of the jargon.
So, thanks for the update DIAC. We look forward to receiving them weekly and Minister Bowen, we really do hope you can have a look over that ALP Government policy.
(Sophie Peer - ChilOut Campaign Director)
