Detaining Asylum Seekers
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455050004700414 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
283
in
advance.
The
Forgotten
Majority:
The
Resettlement
of
Short
Term
Prisoners,
October
2000,
NACRO.
Available
from
169
Clapham
Road,
London
SW9
0PU,
£3
including
p&p.
Travelling
to
Offend?
Many
police
officers,
especially
those
based
in
rural
and
’urban
fringe’
police
forces,
hold
the
view
that
a
considerable
amount
of
high
volume
crime
in
their
area
is
committed
by
travelling
urban
offenders
taking
advantage
of
easy
mobility.
Furthermore,
as
their
funding
is
largely
determined
by
the
resident
population
profile,
police
forces
commonly
argue
that
they
are
not
being
properly
funded
to
deal
with
the
problem
of
travelling
criminals.
Such
views
are
challenged
by
this
research
in
the
South
and
North
Yorkshire
police
force
areas,
which
included
analysis
of
DNA
records
to
help
track
offender
travel
patterns
and
interviews
with
offenders
recently
convicted
of
burglary
and
taking
without
consent.
The
study
found
that
the
vast
majority
of
offender
movements
are
relatively
short.
For
offenders
based
in
Sheffield,
over
half
of
crime
trips
were
of
less
than
two
miles
and
a
third
were
of
less
than
a
mile.
Only
11%
involved
journeys
of
more
than
ten
miles.
Most
offenders
did
not
travel in
order
to
offend,
rather
taking
advantage
of
opportunities
which
presented
themselves
during
normal
travel
routines.
The
strongest
correlation
was
found
between
offence
location
and
current
residence
of
the
offender.
Even
where
offences
were
committed
away
from
the
immediate
locality,
they
tended
to
take
place
within
the
bounds
of
the
local
authority
or
in
places
which
were
obvious
leisure
trips
(e.g.
London)
or
had
a
strong
connection
with
Sheffield
(e.g.
Skegness).
The
study
concludes
that
offenders’
travelling
patterns
have
remained
largely
unchanged
by
modem
transport
methods:
&dquo;Offenders
generally
do
not
travel
long
distances
because
they
are
drawn
from
those
groups
in
the
population
who
lack
the
personal
and
material
resources
to
learn
to
travel
and
sustain
such
travel
thereafter.&dquo;
The
authors
stress
that
this
is
not
to
deny
the
existence
of
a
number
of
professional
’travelling
criminals’;
it
is
just
that
they
are
unlikely
to
account
for
much
prolific
offending.
The
’Road
to
Nowhere’:
the
Evidence for
Travelling
Criminals
, 2000,
by
Paul
Wiles
and
Andrew
Costello,
Home
Office
Research
Study
207.
Detaining
Asylum
Seekers
How
do
immigration
officers
decide
whether
to
detain
asylum
seekers
at
port
of
entry?
This
is
an
increasingly
pertinent
question
in
the
current
climate
of
prejudice
towards
asylum-seekers,
especially
as
immigration
officers’
powers
of
detention
are
exercised
outside
of
the
regulation
provided
by
the
Criminal
Justice
System.
This
study
is
based
primarily
on
interviews
with
35
immigration
officers
and
25
chief
immigration
officers
at
Harwich
Ferry
Port,
Manchester
and
Heathrow
Airports,
and
Waterloo
International
Rail
Terminal.
Basic
information
provided
by
legal
representatives
on
133
on-entry
asylum
cases
was
also
analysed.
While
it
found
many
examples
of
carefully
reasoned
decision-making,
the
study
found
&dquo;clear
evidence
of
some
individual
decisions
and
certain
systematic
practices
which
could
be
described
as
arbitrary&dquo;.
These
included
decisions
which
appear
to
have
been
made
as
a
result
of
personal
prejudice
or
as
a
punitive
reaction
to
perceived
abuse
of
the
system.
Some
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