Kate Osamor – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Osamor on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of women detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the last year have (a) attempted to or (b) inflicted harm upon themselves.

James Brokenshire

Published statistics for the period July 2014 to June 2015 show that 1,501 women entered Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre as the first place of detention. Provisional management information for the same time period shows that there were 54 incidents of self-harm requiring medical treatment at Yarl’s Wood that involved women.

These numbers do not necessarily equate to the number of detainees requiring medical treatment. An individual may have received medical treatment on more than one occasion, therefore a maximum of 54 women could have received medical treatment for self harm, the equivalent of 3.6% of the total female population that entered Yarl’s Wood for the specified period.