Derwentside detention centre: Protest held for International Women's Day

Campaigners have laid flowers outside a female immigration detention centre to mark International Women's Day.

About 20 people protested outside Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre in County Durham.

The government said the centre houses foreign national prison inmates due for release and immigration offenders awaiting deportation.

Protesters said it was "more humane and cheaper" to keep the women "in the community".

The centre at Hassockfield, Consett, which has capacity for 84 people, replaced Yarl's Wood as the UK's only women's only centre when it opened at the end of last year.

The site previously served as the Medomsley detention centre for young offenders and was the scene of widespread abuse for decades before it shut in 1988.

The protesters said the "majority of women" detained in centres are "survivors of rape and other gender-based violence" as well as being victims of "trafficking and modern slavery".

Dr Helen Groom from the No To Hassockfield campaign said: "On the day that we celebrate internationally the women of the world it is important that the women imprisoned in Hassockfield know that we support them and are actively seeking to end their detention.

"We will continue protest at the site until it is closed down permanently.

"Research has proved it is more humane but also much cheaper to manage detention in the community."

Emma Pearson from the campaign said: "The British public must know that immigration detention is expensive, cruel and unnecessary.

"There are many more cost-effective and humane alternatives to detention that could be pursued.

"Immigration detention has no place in a fair and humane asylum system."

The Home Office said 95% of people "facing removal" are managed in the community and detention "must only ever be used sparingly and for the shortest period necessary".

A spokesman said detainees are given regular medical and welfare assessments with the "highest standards" expected from firms running the centres.

He said Derwentside, which is operated by Mitie Care and Custody Ltd, holds a "mixture of time-served foreign national offenders and immigration offenders while we prepare to remove them from the UK".

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