Refugee Tales IV
Edited by David Herd & Anna Pincus
Comma Press £9.99

“We were aware of what was going on outside, we heard about coronavirus…lockdown…we said ‘So now everyone in the whole world is in prison, it’s just that our prison is a bit smaller!’”

There is, however, an essential difference. The evidence from all 14 of these “Tales” from detained refugees demonstrates that detention centres, unlike HM prisons, exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences, offering little or no hope.
 
The Windrush scandal has recently woken public attention to the nature of the Tory government’s notorious “hostile environment,” but the figures speak for themselves.

In 1973, 95 people were indefinitely detained, rising in 2020 to 23,073.