Protecting The Public? Challenging the Indefinite Preventive Detention of Non-Citizens

Abstract

This paper examines the indefinite preventative detention of non-citizens in the UK, arguing that the reasoning of the House of Lords in A v Secretary of State for the Home Department has not been applied within the crime control context. This paper analyses the jurisprudence in relation to indefinite preventive detention in the (non-terrorism) immigration context, arguing that whilst ideas emerging in anti-terrorism law have influenced immigration law, in a wider context, beyond terrorism, the internal logic of immigration control which justifies its discriminatory coercion with assertion of the sovereign right of the state to exclude aliens, has caused resistance to the reasoning of the majority of the House of Lords in A in regard to the preventive detention of non-citizens. It contends that the UK's reliance on these principles is undermined by the fact that the UK has exercised its sovereignty to expressly limit it through its ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.