Unlocking Detention 2015 starts on Monday, 21 September.  This is the second year of Unlocking Detention, which Right to Remain is co-running with Detention Action and the Detention Forum.

 Unlocking Detention is a virtual tour of the UK’s immigration detention estate.  It is all about raising awareness of immigration detention, one of the gravest civil liberties issues in the UK today.

Unless you know somebody personally who is detained, you are very unlikely to ever visit an immigration detention centre, know where they are, or be able to imagine what conditions are like for people in detention.  The tour seeks to change that, by bringing the realities of detention to the public.  No longer out of sight, out of mind!

Each week from 21 September and until 18 December (International Migrants Day), Unlocking Detention will shine a spotlight on a detention through photos, tweets, testimony, information and blog posts.  Unlocking Detention ‘visits’ a different detention centre every week – you can see the calendar here.

This week – the first of the tour – Unlocking Detention is focusing on people detained in short-term holding centres and under immigration powers in prison – an especially hidden form of detention.

Every year we ask supporters to get involved and be a part of speaking out about this inherently unfair and inhumane system…and this year is no different!  You can get involved by sending us photographs (read more about that here), or by sending us some words about detention.

Read the blog posts from last year’s tour – there is a great range of thoughtful, informative and moving writing.  The blog posts were written by people who were in detention at the time, those who had experienced detention in the past, detention centre visitors, campaigners and other NGOs involved in challenging detention.  And look out for this year’s exciting pieces – new blog posts will be published every week of the tour.  If you’d like to write a piece yourself, please get in touch!