‘Beyond Imagination’ shares lived experience accounts from people who have been handcuffed in immigration detention and makes recommendations to protect human rights in immigration detention to the Australian Government.
Since 2016, the Justice and Equity Centre has been working with asylum seekers in Australian immigration detention centres to ensure they are treated humanely and with dignity. Through our work, we identified the arbitrary and excessive use of handcuffs in immigration detention centres as a major human rights concern.
Our report, Beyond Imagination, shares the first-hand accounts of people who have been handcuffed in immigration detention. It highlights how handcuffing practices are breaching human rights, preventing access to health care and causing physical and psychological harm to detainees.
Beyond Imagination also examines how insufficient oversight and regulation of immigration detention by the Commonwealth Government has allowed inappropriate handcuffing practices to continue.
The stories shared demonstrate that reform is needed to ensure adequate standards of safety, humanity and dignity for people in detention.
We make three key recommendations for the Australian Government:
- establish a Minimum Health Standard for detainees in the Migration Act;
- support those standards with an effective, expert oversight body; and
- regulate and limit the use of force.
