Asylum-seeker self-harm rates rose after offshore processing began
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Version 0 of 1. Government policies are resulting in increased self harm in Australian detention centres, a leaked report shows. The report by the detention centre manager Serco, obtained by Guardian Australia includes statistics illustrating how long detainees have been held in detention and the rate of self harm over time. It presents the clearest picture of self harm in detention since the detention logs website released 7,632 detention incident reports in 2013. The report identifies an increased risk of self harm since the introduction of offshore processing and the regional resettlement arrangement introduced by the Rudd government, which ensured asylum seekers would not be resettled in Australia and instead be transferred to Papua New Guinea. This has resulted in asylum seekers spending longer in detention, with more than half having spent four to six months inside: The report, dated February 2014, says increased time spent in detention is associated with an increase in "adverse" behaviour, identifying the seven-to-12-month bracket as the worst period. "[50% of detainees] will very shortly fall into the seven-to-12-month band when historically such time periods in detention are a trigger for adverse behaviour," it says. The report shows a recent increase in the rates of self harm, identifying Christmas Island as the worst-affected site: Self-harm rates increased steadily following the introduction of offshore processing, and there has been another increase following the introduction of the resettlement arrangement, spiking in January to 11.5 incidents per 1,000 people. The previous high point was in August 2011, which related to high levels of self harm at Christmas Island and Curtin detention centre. |