Life is extra risky for women in immigration detention

We propose setting up forms of external and independent scrutiny by legally trained decision-makers with power to intervene to ensure general standards of care are appropriate and the particular needs of women are both recognised and met. Federal magistrates should be a core part of the new system so certain serious decisions can be made by those with the appropriate skills to make them.

Magistrates should be involved where: liberty needs to be curtailed; where questions of identity exist; where forms of segregation are required; if deportation is necessary; or where there are disputed facts. These magistrates should attend detention facilities - as their state counterparts do in psychiatric cases - so due process and external decisions are both visible and comply with good legal practice. We also recommend the Ombudsman appoint official visitors, including women, to offer independent complaints handling processes to detainee regularly at the facilities.

We also want to see a review of the published standards, both to improve the criteria for assessing compliance and to include the many areas that particularly affect women. These include privacy, clothing, fertility and gynaecological issues, sexual harassment and assault and procedures relating to birthing, babies and child care. It is these areas that have given rise to some of the problems we have been told about. There also needs to be specific training for staff on culture and gender issues.

Palmer and the ANA0 are government agencies and as such cannot suggest such major policy changes, but their reports offer proof of the logic of the more radical steps needed to change the flaws they have both identified in the system. All detainees will benefit from such changes, as will all of us who want to ensure injustices are not done in our names.