Category: Newsletter

The strategy of the Qatari government has been to shift the word’s attention away from its human rights record and on to sport and culture in a process of ‘sportswashing’. Hence its successful bid to host the 2022 football World Cup. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has documented LGBT+ people being subjected to police harassment and…
Continue reading Focus on Qatar

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and the Global Legal Action Network have brought a case on behalf of a former detainee and forced labour survivor against the Home Secretary, HM Revenue and Customs and the National Crime Agency claiming that their failure or refusal to investigate imports from the Uyghur Region is unlawful. The WUC…
Continue reading Government Sued by World Uyghur Congress and the Global Legal Action Network

The Prevent Strategy seeks to pre-empt acts of terrorism by identifying those at risk of committing such acts, including by intervening to stop people moving from extremism into terrorist-related activity. It means that teachers, doctors, counsellors and the like must be alert to the signs of potential radicalisation based on the Extremism Risk Guidelines which…
Continue reading The Prevent Strategy – Amnesty’s Concerns

Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences are open-ended, so those given them have no end date for release. They were created in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, diluted somewhat in 2008 legislation and then discontinued in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. But IPP was never abolished retrospectively even though it…
Continue reading Imprisonment for Public Protection and Human Rights

Live Facial Recognition technology (LFR) involves linking cameras to databases containing images of people for matching. The police believe this technology helps them combat crime and terrorism. Previous research threw doubt on this and the Court of Appeal found in 2020 that the use of this technology by South Wales police was unlawful.  This new…
Continue reading A Sociotechnical Audit: Assessing Police Use of Facial Recognition – A Report from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge

Following the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, the then Home Secretary commissioned the Inspectorate of Constabulary to carry out a thematic inspection to assess current vetting and counter-corruption arrangements in policing across England and Wales, including an assessment of forces’ abilities to detect and deal with misogynistic and predatory behaviour. The…
Continue reading An Inspection of Vetting, Misconduct and Misogyny in the Police Service by his Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford examined Home Office data showing that Afghans were among the top nationalities coming to the UK in small boats.   Around a third of the 40,000 crossing in small boats this year are from Albania. Of the over 4,000 potential victims of slavery referred to the Home Office…
Continue reading Asylum Seekers’ News

Since January this year, those on immigration bail have been subject to GPS tagging. This research, published in October, is based on a review of medical-legal assessments written by clinicians concerning the impact of electronic monitoring, conducted by Medical Justice, and interviews with 19 former clients of Bail for Immigration Detainees who have been fitted…
Continue reading ‘Every Move You Make: The Human Cost of GPS Tagging in the Immigration System’. A Report by Bail for Immigration Detainees, Medical Justice and the Public Law Project

This report argues that the public attitude to immigration has changed to become more positive. It says that, over the past decade, the government has rolled out a series of measures with the specific aim of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for people currently residing in the UK without immigration status. These measures are designed to…
Continue reading Beyond the Hostile Environment – Report by the Institute of Public Policy

We reported in November’s Newsletter than the Home Office was increasing the number of immigration centres to house asylum seekers: two mothballed detention centres (in Oxfordshire and Hampshire) are to be reopened next year. Manston detention centre on a former RAF base in Kent has hit the headlines. Built to house 1,600 asylum seekers for…
Continue reading Immigration Detention Centres