Hundreds of child refugees wrongly sent to adult detention centres by Home Office

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. open image in gallery Findings by the charities show 14 young people spent up to seven months in adult prisons after being wrongly assessed by the Home Office Maddie Harris, director of Humans for Rights Network, told The Independent: “These children are terrified and continue to be profoundly affected by the experience of wrongful criminalisation. It’s a direct result of flawed Home Office decision-making at the point of arrival and a profoundly harmful policy of criminalising asylum seekers for the act of arrival in the UK.” The findings in today’s report also show that: 485 children referred to local authorities in England between January 2023 and June 2023 were found to be under 18 and had to be immediately removed from unsafe facilities. open image in gallery Children as young as 14 are being ‘exposed to harm and abuse’ as a result of inaccurate age assessments by the Home Office, charities claim Jamal*, a 16-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was age-assessed as 25 on arrival in the UK after a brief visual assessment. Each case is a child who is being put at risk and whose welfare is being forgotten.” Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said: “These new figures show that there continues to be something fundamentally wrong with Home Office decision-making at the border, and hundreds of children are suffering as a result.