The Australian government’s use of city hotels as ad hoc immigration detention centres – including confining people for nearly two years – has “devastating impacts on people’s mental and physical health”, the Australian Human Rights Commission has found.
In a report published on Wednesday morning, the commission argued that the use of hotels to incarcerate people remained a “regularised” part of Australia’s immigration infrastructure, rather than a measure of last resort, even though the number of people detained – and the length of their detention – has steadily decreased.
At the time of the commission’s inspections in mid-2022, the longest continuous detention in a hotel was 634 days and the average time was 69 days.
The report found the negative mental health impacts of hotel detention grew progressively worse the longer confinement continued, and often exacerbated earlier traumas.
“Hotels are not designed to detain people and lack the facilities required to properly care for a person’s basic needs,” said the human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay.
“People are cooped up all day, mostly confined to their rooms with little or nothing to do. Their windows don’t fully open, they have limited social contact, their living arrangements don’t allow privacy, there is no room to meet visitors, very few facilities, scant living space, and in some hotels there is no outdoor space.”
Finlay inspected detention hotels with Prof Suresh Sundram, the head of the department of psychiatry at Monash University, and found “entrenched boredom, loneliness, frustration and apathy” among detainees.
Some reported they felt they were better off in prison or immigration detention centres, where they had access to activities, exercise and fresh air.
Finlay said: “One person told us: ‘The sole purpose of being here seems to be to torture. To be made to suffer like this … two or three years ago I could think about life outside but now I am not capable of envisaging outside at all. I have no imagination, everything is blurry.’”
Government figures show the number of people held in Alternative Places of Detention (Apods) – which also includes aged care and mental health inpatient facilities – has fallen from more than 100 in early 2022, to just over 40.
Finlay welcomed that development and said the commission recognised the department faced a “difficult and complex” task in managing detention.
“However, I am concerned by the fact that the use of [Apods] has become regularised within Australia’s immigration detention system, rather than being limited to exceptional circumstances.”
The commission also reiterated concerns about the use of restraints, including handcuffs, when moving people outside detention hotels. The use of handcuffs has caused people to refuse transfers to vital medical appointments.
The commission’s report made 24 recommendations. In response the Department of Home Affairs agreed with two, disagreed with five, and noted the remaining 17. The department said it worked to minimise the use of hotels as places of detention.
“The department… is actively working to reduce its reliance on hotel Apods for the placement of immigration detainees in held detention,” the department said in its formal response.
It said decisions on where to detain people were made on a case-by-case basis, but that “for some detainees, Apod accommodation is the most appropriate placement option for their circumstances”.
“The use of hotel Apods for detainee placements is always premised on the shortest possible time and has significantly reduced.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission recommended the department change its policies surrounding the use of force, to consider the health impacts on a detained person who refused to be moved off-site for a medical or other appointment, if that move required restraints, such as handcuffs.
“The department acknowledges the commission’s concerns relating to the use of mechanical restraints applied on people in detention who are taken off-site for routine and planned medical appointments and other non-urgent appointments, however disagrees with [that] recommendation.”
