Serco’s ugly legacy in Australia’s immigration detention system

Published Jan 29, 2025, 6:00 PM

The company that’s run Australia’s immigration detention network for over a decade, British conglomerate Serco, has lost its contract, but not before helping build what’s been called one of the world’s ‘most extreme and secretive’ detention regimes.

Across the life of the contract, there have been scandals, incidents of self-harm and allegations of mistreatment and disproportionate use of force.

The federal government’s decision to dump Serco has been welcomed by advocates and former detainees, but with a new private prison operator taking over, there’s little optimism that conditions will improve.

Today, journalist and contributor to The Saturday Paper Denham Sadler on Serco’s ugly legacy and the future of immigration detention in Australia.

 

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Guest: Contributor to The Saturday Paper, Denham Sadler.

From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. For more than a decade, the British multinational Circo has managed Australia's Onshore immigration detention system. During that time, they're rating billions of taxpayers dollars and helped build what some described as one of the most secretive and extreme detention regimes. Their time has also been plagued by scandals and allegations of mistreatment and disproportionate use of force. Now the government has decided not to renew Circo's contract, choosing instead to go with a US private prison operator. Today journalists have contributed to the Saturday paper Denham Sadler on the ugly legacy of Circo and the future of immigration detention in Australia. It's Thursday January thirty. Daniman, You've been reporting on Australia's immigration detention system for ten years now, so can you tell me about Circo.

Circo is this massive conglomerate based in the UK. They have a market cap of about three billion dollars and they're listening on the London Stock Exchange and they basically try and win any work that the government wants to outsource.

What does a career with CIRCO look like. It's secure employment where training is provided, working in a DOS.

So they operate across defense, they operate in the space sector, they run cleaning services, and they have a massive presence in the justice space, so they're on prisons and they run immigration detention centers.

Registered nurses, corrective case officers, security and intelligence officers, vocational trainers, trade instructors and so much more.

It's real jobs for real people.

And they've been running the immigration detention centers, all the onshore centers in Australia for about fifteen years. So has this reputation across the years for being basically akin to prison, very highly securitized, a focus on kind of safety and security over anything else, over the well being of people, and that's what a lot of advocates and people that have been through the system have said as well, that it's led to a lot of issues with how people are treated today. The Karake website released a manual which has been given out by CERCO to the people it employs to work at its immigration detention center.

It is a last resort, as it says, you know, getting into a quote fight with asylum seekers. But you know, if you read through the document, there's quite a few use of force issues. There's instructions on how to kick, punch, jab fingers into detainee whims, you know, pressure point tactics, which are obviously very controversial.

There's been a lot of scandals and kind of there's been incidents of self harm. There's been a lot of valegations of human rights abuses.

Professor Louise Newman from Monash University tell the Joint Select Committee into the Immigration detentions at a network there's no medical review process for the use of solitary confinement in detention centers. She said, some staff at the centers run by the company Circo even carrying knives to cut down asylum seekers who try to hang themselves.

And a lot of concerns about how people are treated in these centers and how.

Much money they raked in from the comwealth over the years.

They've received more than seven point five billion dollars across about fifteen years of contracts, so that's across two contracts and one of those contracts was extended many many times. But yeah, it's very lucrative business. They've won a lot of money.

Okay, so that's a lot of money over that time. Before we get into detail about some of those incidents and scandals, you mentioned what was it like before CIRCO came into the picture. How much has the immigration detention system changed.

This was something that surprised me or bit some advocates I talked to remember kind of twenty years ago, you could go in on a weekend and take someone out of the network and take them to the beach or take them to a church service, and so there was a different level of security to the system. But across that time, we've obviously seen seeking asylum and immigration become such a large political issue, and it's become a national security issue, and we've seen the rise and off short attention and everything like that as well. That's transformed it into one that is much closer to a prison network and with a focus on securitization.

So wats the hardline approach mat for people in detention? What does it like to be in detention?

So one of the men I spoke to for the story, his name's Mustaffer Azima Taba, and he's known as Moz and he's a couraged asylam seeker who was eventually medivaced to Australia as part of that cohort of asylum seekers that were taken to Australia for medical means. And throughout this time he also has been recognized as a refugee to a legitimate refugee and then after being medivac he spent about fourteen months in hotel detention. So CO also operate these hotels at service detention centers.

The government used the hotel as prison to lock me up and the situation made me more sick. My body is trembling when I think about the time I was in those hotels.

He spoke to me of this regime where CIRCO basically just controlled his entire life, which was restricted to this tiny hotel room where he could barely open the windows.

Definitely, it was worse than Manus Island. I was locked up on the third floor of the Mantra and the Park prison. I spent twenty three hours a day in a room. Officers ten times a day came to the room.

And one of the biggest things he talks about a lot about the trauma is that he was just pat searched constantly by the circle guards. He says across his time in the hotel, he was pat searched about four hundred times, and he said this has a really huge impact on him and his mental health and was very triggering. And there was another case that the as An Equity Center settled with CIRCO and the government in twenty twenty three, and that related to an asylum seeker called you See, and he was forced to wear handcuffs every time he left the detention center. He was being held out to access medical treatment and he, similar to Moz just says this has had a very triggering effect on him and it was very traumatizing and did impact his ability to access that medical treatment as well. And these incidents definitely aren't isolated cases as well, so we do thanks to the parliamentary system, we have a bit of information on how rife these things are, and some stats released by Home Affairs shows there are actually more than fifteen incidents of use of force on an average day in detention and these use of force includes the use of handcuffs, and there was also at least one incident of self harm on an average day as well across the last five years.

Right, and so looking back on Circo's reign. Advocates and informed detain these the people you've spoken to, are they optimistic that it's over.

Nearly every advocate I talked to that has fort Circo over these years and represented people in the detention centers, they're definitely not upset to be seen in the back of Circo. But there's no positivity at all that anything's going to change when the government has brought in just another prison provider, another company that has a reputation for certain conditions in their centers. Green Senator David Shubridge told me that he thinks it's the most extreme and secretive detention regime in the world, and I think everyone's still pretty concerned that not much is going to change in the system.

After the break. Why the government broke with Circo. Then the federal government has opted not to renew Cerco's contract for running Australia's immigration detention system. Do we know why they made that decision?

Yeah, it was really interesting. I think a lot of people I talked to that are very involved in the space and how what operates with surprise that Circo lost the contract. Potentially, there were just too many incidents over time, and they had a chance because the contract did end. They haven't scrapped the contract, it did come to an end, and they've found a new provider that they took that chance to bring someone else in. They did reply to some questions for me, they didn't really address any of the questions I put to them about Circo's track record and the fact that it is a private operator running it just makes it a bit harder to access information as an added layer of secrecy when they can claim commercial and confidence on some of these elements of the contract and hired that from the public.

So what do we know about the new company that will take over?

So the new providers a subsidiary of a company called Management and Training Corporations. They're a US based company and they run a number of for profit prisons in the United States as well as immigration detention centers.

Riots took hold of a prison in Arizona.

Sixteen people were injured, twelve hundred inmates were evacuated, Much of the facility itself was left un inhabitable.

And there's been a lot of incidents reported on already.

Their targeted destruction of MTC property strongly suggested The riots were brought on by inmate dissatisfaction with the way the prison was operated. There was a culture of disorganization, disengagement in disregard for a Department of Corrections.

Policies, and a lot of legal suits that have kind of shed a bit of light on what the conditions alike in their centers, and it doesn't paint a very nice picture.

The ACLU published its report last year. In addition to accounts of overcrowding and squalid conditions inside the tent city, inmates complained of excessive use of solitary confinement, a lack of activities to occupy their time, and inadequate medical treatment.

There's a lot of allegations of mistreatment. There's a lot of concerns about access to health care and the provision of health care to people under their care.

The toilets would back up and ras sewage would overflow into the kevlar tents.

A lot of this has come out across the years. It's nothing new, and the federal government's definitely aware of it.

An MTC spokesman emailed completely disagree with the anecdotal allegations in the ACLU report.

So while the government is getting rid of Circo from the Immigration Attention Network. There aren't any real hopes that there's going to be a big change to the approach because they're bringing in another company that's known for running prisons in this way.

So they're signed the contract. Do we know how much that was for and over what period?

So the contract they've won runs for five years and it's worth more than two billion dollars, so it's another massive contract running for a long time and they're operating all the same facilities that Circle Or were, so they're taking over from midway through this year. I think it's important to note that CERCO still has a massive presence in Australia. They win a lot of government contracts and even in the justice space, they still run two really big prisons in Australia on massive contracts. So they run the Acacia Prison in Western Australia and the Clarence Prison in New South Wales which is fairly new and it's the biggest prison in Australia now, So they still have a massive presence even in justice and across everything else as well.

And just finally, you've been covering these issues for a long time now, just broadly what do we need to do with our detention and immigration system to change the way we approach asylum seekers and those on visas.

Oh, there's a lot we need to do, But I think when it comes to these centers, I think it's the approach to these people as criminals and that these places are serving as another prison if they're going to exist at all. They're not meant to be places where people spend a lot of time, but there are people spending years there, so that needs to be looked down. I think they're people that either have served a prison sentence or haven't received any sentence, so they shouldn't be treated like criminals. So I think that whole approach of security above all that else needs to be addressed. There's obviously huge problems with offshore processing and how people are treated on know WU. There's still people on know WU, so that needs to be addressed and those people need to be taken off there. And I think it's a wider issue of how we approach immigration and taking a more human rights focus approach versus this treating as a national security issue or a political tool that can be used to kind of win votes.

Then then thanks for coming in thanks much for your time, thanks for having me. In a statement to the Saturday paper, CERCO said we strongly reject the assertions about Circo's operations. Circo's commitment to the rights and welfare of detainees in our care has remained consistent since two thousand and nine. Also in the News today, underlying inflation for the December quarter eas to three point two percent, down from three point six percent in the previous quarter. It's the lowest rate since twenty twenty one. Meanwhile, the consumer price index rows by just zero point two percent in the same quarter, with the largest price rises coming from alcohol and tobacco. Some economists say the figures are promising for a potential interest rate cut. A new South Wales Police, the Australian Federal Police and ASO are investigating whether explosives discovered in Sydney's northwest were intended for an antisemitic attack. Police say they were alluded to the explosives, which were being stored in the caravan and dural ten days ago. An anti Semitic message was also found in the caravan. The powerjail police seized had a blast zone radius of forty meters in diameter. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.

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