Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), a women’s immigration prison near Consett, County Durham has been operational since late 2021. The prison has capacity for 84 women, and is due to take over from Yarl’s Wood IRC in Bedfordshire as the primary location for female immigration prisoners. It is being operated by Mitie, a notorious private company often employed by the Home Office.
The site on which the prison is built has a dark history. Originally Medomsley Detention Centre for young offenders, it saw horrific sexual and physical abuse of young boys from the 1960s until it was closed in 1988. In the late 1990s the facility reopened as Hassockfield Secure Training Centre, where in 2004, 14-year-old Adam Rickwood became the youngest person to die in custody in a British prison. Now, it has once again been repurposed, this time as a detention centre for women migrants. Abuse is bound to continue, as women in prisons are often subject to abuse, and their immigration situation means they are even more vulnerable and less likely to receive any justice from the racist British state.
Newcastle Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! has supported several protests against the building and opening of the prison. Campaign groups Abolish Detention, Durham People’s Assembly and No to Hassockfield hold regular protests on the third Saturday of every month. On 2 January 2021, once it was confirmed that the first group of detainees had arrived, campaigners blocked the entrance to the Derwentside and disrupted shift changes, making local news.
The opening of this prison is part of a larger attack on migrant rights by the Home Office under the guise of the Nationality and Borders Bill. In an imperialist country such as Britain, which loots and plunders resources and labour power around the globe, all immigration controls are necessarily racist. We do not simply demand Derwentside IRC closes and the women be detained elsewhere; all immigration prisons must close. The fight for migrant rights is bound up with the fight against British imperialism.
Annie O’Conner
Next protest: Saturday 19 February 12–2pm Derwentside IRC, Medomsley, Consett
