‘In 2017/18, Home Office detention expenditure was £108m’ says the May 2019 report (pdf) from Liberty.
The report makes the economic case for a strict 28-day time limit for the first time, and presents the potential costs and savings of immigration detention reform in the UK.
The report finds:
- Under a 28-day immigration detention time limit, there are potential long-term cost savings of £55-65m each year
- On the available evidence, plausible alternatives cost less than detention, with a likely (albeit wide) cost range of £6-30m
- In 2018, around 25,000 people entered detention and a similar number left. Encouragingly, these figures are lower than the historical trend
- Home Office statistics going back to 2010 also show individual cases of people being held for much longer: over four years, at times.
