When Graham Thom began advocating for refugees held in onshore immigration detention centres greater than 20 years in the past, guests had been allowed to take detainees out on excursions and will ship home-cooked meals.
But throughout his time as a refugee adviser at Amnesty International Australia, Thom noticed safety improve and the immigration detention community grow to be extra just like the jail system.
“Twenty years ago, you could have volunteers take people out of a centre on a weekend and take them to church or to the beach,” he tells The Saturday Paper. “The way the whole visitor situation has been securitised has been a key difference we’ve seen. Everybody has been deemed high-risk, which means everybody has to be handcuffed, which means people refuse to leave the centre for treatment because it’s so humiliating.”
The British conglomerate Serco has overseen this transformation whereas raking in $7.6 billion in Commonwealth funding since 2009 to function the immigration detention centres all through mainland Australia and on Christmas Island.
Across the lifetime of Serco’s contract, the cohort of detainees in Australia’s immigration detention community modified. The system used to comprise numerous asylum seekers who had arrived by boat, however now the bulk are people whose visas have been cancelled on character grounds. Those in immigration detention centres who’ve dedicated a criminal offense and failed the visa character check have already served their full jail sentence.
The firm has centered on safety above wellbeing in its strategy to immigration detention, says Thom, who’s now advocacy coordinator on the Refugee Council of Australia.
Indeed, Serco’s reign over the Australian immigration detention community over the previous decade and a half has been stricken by scandals, incidents of self-harm and allegations of mistreatment and disproportionate use of power.
So it was welcome information to the refugees and asylum seekers, former detainees, legal professionals, advocates and politicians who’ve fought the immigration detention system and Serco through the years that, late final yr, the federal authorities opted to not renew Serco’s contract.
There is little optimism, nevertheless, about substantial enhancements within the system, with the federal authorities bringing in one other non-public jail operator. A subsidiary of Management and Training Corporation (MTC), one in every of America’s largest for-profit jail operators, will take over on a contract price $2.3 billion over the following 5 years. Serco’s contract has been prolonged by 180 days to help with the transition and can now run till early June.
MTC was employed by the federal authorities in early 2023 to handle the offshore immigration detention centre on Nauru.
A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs stated it undertook an “extensive and open procurement process” and that “all necessary due diligence” was performed within the engagement of MTC. “The Department and Australian Border Force (ABF) would like to thank the outgoing facilities and detainee service provider … for their commitment to the immigration detention network over the past 15 years,” the spokesperson informed The Saturday Paper.
While the lack of its Australian contract was a setback for Serco – it reported to the London Stock Exchange in November that the cancellation represented £165 million ($325 million) in misplaced income in 2025 or 6 per cent of its forecasts for the yr – the multinational stays extremely worthwhile with further enterprise in North America.
In this nation, Serco nonetheless has a big presence within the detention community, with state authorities contracts to function the Acacia Prison in Western Australia and Clarence Correctional Centre in New South Wales. It at the moment faces a class-action lawsuit over an incident on the Clarence jail, the place the NSW Ombudsman final yr discovered practically 200 inmates had been punished after a guard was assaulted by one. The report discovered that Serco had acted in an “unreasonable and oppressive” method.
The National Justice Project is getting ready a category motion on behalf of the affected inmates, with barristers already briefed and a variety of lead plaintiffs recognized.
In an announcement, a Serco spokesperson stated the corporate “regrets that on this occasion it was found [its] actions were not up to standard” and has “already implemented several key recommendations”.
In the immigration system, Serco leaves an unpleasant legacy.
Incidents associated to self-harm have been rife throughout the Australian immigration detention system, with multiple reported every day on common over the previous 5 years. This consists of 714 actions of self-harm, and 2000 threats of self-harm in Australian detention centres, in response to Home Affairs knowledge.
And this week the division revealed there have been greater than 15 incidents of using power – together with using restraints and handcuffs – on common day by day throughout the immigration detention community in 2023-24.
Justice and Equity Centre principal solicitor Jonathan Hall Spence says beneath Serco’s operations there was “a distinct lack of safety for people in immigration detention”.
The centre settled a declare towards Serco and the federal authorities in 2023 on behalf of an asylum seeker, often called Yasir, who was pressured to put on handcuffs when leaving a detention centre to entry medical therapy, regardless of Serco’s personal coverage stating this ought to be carried out solely as a final resort.
“For many people in immigration detention they’ll refuse to attend offsite medical appointments because they don’t want to be handcuffed,” says Hall Spence. “That’s degrading and quite distressing for many people.”
This week the Commonwealth National Preventive Mechanism, which displays locations of detention, recognized using an outlawed “dry cell” – with no mounted mattress, bathroom, bathe or sink – within the Serco-run Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre east of Perth in Western Australia. The watchdog discovered there was no coverage on when this kind of cell ought to be used or tips or procedures referring to how.
The Australian Human Rights Commission final yr alone launched seven stories that discovered extreme use of power by Serco officers had breached the human rights of detainees.
Serco was additionally fined final yr for making an attempt to cowl up using fireplace extinguishers towards detainees throughout riots on the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre in 2022. An investigation discovered the extinguishers had been “discharged directly” on detainees, together with those that weren’t collaborating within the violence.
In response to criticisms of Serco’s therapy of detainees over the course of its operations in Australia, the spokesperson says, “our priority has always been the wellbeing of our people and those in our care”.
“Serco has proven to be responsive, flexible and adaptive in an increasingly complex and challenging environment, supporting and implementing the Australian government’s policies for administrative detention.”
Greens immigration spokesperson David Shoebridge, who has been looking for accountability from the Department of Home Affairs on the operation of the immigration detention community and Serco’s function in it, says Australia’s immigration detention regime “has become one of the most extreme and secretive in the world”.
“Serco didn’t create this scheme – they have grabbed an unethical profit-making opportunity gifted to them by toxic politics,” he tells The Saturday Paper.
National Justice Project chief government George Newhouse says he has witnessed firsthand the damaging results of privatisation on the immigration detention system.
“Often it means that in order to make a profit, the welfare of prisoners and detainees is systemically compromised,” Newhouse says.
The federal authorities is nonetheless dedicated to a privatised immigration detention community, with MTC working beneath the oversight of the ABF.
“The performance of the contract, quality of services delivered, including monitoring the treatment of detainees in the care of any detention service provider will be assured and managed by the ABF,” the Home Affairs spokesperson stated.
When artist and refugee Mostafa Azimitabar heard Serco would not run immigration detention in Australia, he felt no optimism. For 14 months, his life as a Kurdish–Iranian refugee was beneath the whole management of the corporate, which stored him confined in two Melbourne resorts after he was evacuated from Manus Island for medical consideration.
During this time, he says, Serco guards pat-searched him roughly 400 instances and he was stored in a room with a window that opened barely 10 centimetres. Most of the time he was with out recent air or entry to sunshine. A decide later discovered a “lack of care and humanity” in Serco’s therapy of Azimitabar, together with the tinting of the lodge room home windows so supporters and protesters exterior couldn’t see him.
“I don’t think the new company is going to be softer than other companies like Serco,” he says. “Each one of these companies is tougher than the previous ones.”
Thom shares these considerations. “The centres are horrible regardless of who is operating them,” he says.
This article was first revealed within the print version of The Saturday Paper on
January 18, 2025 as “Serco breaker”.
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