The Dover Detainee Visitor Group
Registered Charity N^o106667 Patron: The Most Rev’d Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury Who we are How you can help Links Home	Patron:		Background Information The background and structure of the DDVG Kent Refugee Action Network, Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees, and Refugee Action founded the Dover Detainee Visitors Group in 2002. Dover Detainee Visitor Group is a voluntary organisation committed to helping Immigration Act Detainees at Dover Immigration and Removal Centre. The group is non-political. The Dover Immigration and Removal Centre, holding up to 310 men, is situated in the old Borstal on the Western Heights, Dover, Kent. It was intended for use as a short-term detention centre prior to removal. However, many of the detainees are there for up to two years. We have volunteer visitors who each befriend and visit the detainee who is allocated to them, and our Coordinator provides some direct services to the detainees. We put great emphasis on training and supporting our volunteer visitors, who meet regularly in local groups for mutual support. An executive Committee runs the organisation. The Group is also linked to other organisation which visit detention centres through AVID – The Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees. The Wider Background The Dover Detainees Visitor Group has close links with a national organisation known as the Association of Visitors to Detention Centres, AVID. This is the umbrella charity for groups visiting immigration detainees. Britain currently detains around 2000 people of this type, and it is planned to increase the number to 4000 in the future. They have the right to apply for bail but this can be difficult for those who may have left their own country in haste, who may not speak any English and who may very well not have any contacts at all in Britain let alone ones prepared and able to stand as sureties. Immigration detainees can be: asylum seekers who have arrived legally and whose claims are being investigated; people who have not arrived legally; overstayers; criminals awaiting deportation or rejected asylum seekers awaiting removal. In many but not all cases the categories overlap: an illegal entrant or overstayer may also be an asylum seeker. They are detained on the orders of an immigration officer and some spend years incarcerated. The use of prisons for holding asylum seekers largely ended in January 2002 though there are still about 100 dual detainees (people found guilty of crimes) and 50 suspected "troublemakers" in prisons. This last group is sent to prison without any judicial oversight - they never have their day in court.    There are 'Detention Centres' at Campsfield (Oxfordshire), Tinsley House (Gatwick) and Oakington (Cambridgeshire), Dover (Kent) and Harmondsworth near Heathrow. The show-piece Yarlswood in Buckinghamshire was half destroyed by fire on 14th February 2002 before it was fully commissioned. It subsequently proved impossible to obtain insurance for the other half until recently, and lay idle until mid-2004. It is now starting to take up to 120 women with families who due into the Centre by Christmas, up to about 260 people. Two prisons at Haslar and Lindholme were reclassified as Detention Centres on 8th February 2002 but are still operated by the prison service.  All Detention Centres are now known as Removal Centres but there has been no change whatsoever in their function. The new name was decided upon at the highest levels in the Home Office for political reasons. Dungavel House in Scotland houses women, men and families with children and is expanding to 193 spaces in August 2004. Some asylum seekers are currently allowed into the community while their claims are assessed. In some cases the man is detained while the wife and family are given temporary admission - but the Home Office is planning to imprison more women and children in future. The groups which visit detainees are all independent and have different organisational structures and ways of working. AVID provides advice, runs training programmes and spreads good practice. To find out more, why not contact us in Dover on 01304 242755 Or mailto: DDVG Top