Community detention for families in Australia
DIMIA has an arrangement with a community sector organisation which provides care and residential accommodation for the families living in community detention. To be transferred to community detention, Minister Vanstone must make a "residence determination" with respect to the detainee. All families with detainee children under 18 are on residence determinations. (Note: this is not the case for "split families", where a parent is detained while their children who have visas live in the community, for example, the Chinese fathers at Villawood.)
The families in community detention do not have visas. They are still in "immigration detention". The Minister can stipulate different conditions for each family, such as when they need to be at the residence, when they need to report to DIMIA officers. However within these conditions families can go out shopping, go to school and so on, without being accompanied by a guard.
In a number of respects the families in community detention are better off than those on Bridging Visa E's (BVE). As they are in immigration detention, their accommodation, food, schooling etc are paid for by DIMIA. Most families on BVE have no assistance from the government in meeting these costs. However DIMIA may choose to charge families for the costs of community detention, as they have done with other forms of detention.
The following excerpt is from the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Bill 2005:
- Minor to be detained as a last resort
- 2. New section 4AA is proposed to state an affirmation by the Parliament that, as a matter of principle, a minor shall only be detained as a measure of last resort.
- 3. The new section is proposed to indicate that the principle relates to the holding of children in traditional detention arrangements. The principle would indicate that, where detention of a child is required under the Act, it should, when and wherever possible, take place in the community, under a residence determination.
- Community Detention Arrangements
- 4. Currently the Act requires that a person in immigration detention be accompanied and restrained by, or on behalf of, an immigration officer or held in secured arrangements. This is required regardless of the particular characteristics of the person, such as their age, health, behaviour, or likelihood to abscond.
- 5. The new non-compellable power in Subdivision B of Division 7 of Part 2 will allow the Minister, acting personally, to specify alternative arrangements for a person's detention.
- 6. In particular, this power will enable the Minister to allow families with children to reside in the community at a specified place (instead of at a detention centre or residential housing project) in accordance with conditions that address their individual circumstances.
- 7. These conditions are expected to be such as to require the person to be present at the specified residence during specified hours, and to report to immigration officials at specified times. The types of conditions that could be included would not be limited. Under these arrangements, detainees would be free to move about in the community without being accompanied or restrained by an officer under the Act. The only restraint on a person to whom the Minister's determination applies would be that he or she complies with the conditions specified in that determination.
- 8. The Minister will be publishing instructions and guidelines in relation to the exercise of this power, with particular emphasis being placed on the Government's intention that the best interests of children will be taken into account, and where detention of an unlawful non-citizen family (with children) is required under the Act, detention should be under these alternative arrangements where and as soon as possible, rather than under traditional detention.
- 9. It is the Government's intention that where persons who are known or reasonably suspected to be unlawful non-citizens who are in a family have made a valid visa application and are awaiting the Minister's delegate's decision on that application, or removal is imminent, or a family member has breached the conditions of the Minister's residence determination, that the family (including the father) will be detained, if possible, in a residential housing project that is in the city nearest to the family's prior residence.