The Herald has long campaigned for a fairer and more transparent system of determining applications for asylum and a policy which treats asylum seekers humanely, especially where children are involved. The news that families with children are being detained in Dungavel House, the former open prison in Lanarkshire, pending deportation, alongside convicted rapists and paedophiles, is, therefore, extremely disturbing. We recognise that families whose claim for asylum has failed are now detained in Dungavel for days rather than weeks, but it is completely unacceptable that people who have committed no crime, particularly teenagers and children, should be forced to share accommodation, even for a short time, with dangerous criminals.

The Herald has long campaigned for a fairer and more transparent system of determining applications for asylum and a policy which treats asylum seekers humanely, especially where children are involved. The news that families with children are being detained in Dungavel House, the former open prison in Lanarkshire, pending deportation, alongside convicted rapists and paedophiles, is, therefore, extremely disturbing. We recognise that families whose claim for asylum has failed are now detained in Dungavel for days rather than weeks, but it is completely unacceptable that people who have committed no crime, particularly teenagers and children, should be forced to share accommodation, even for a short time, with dangerous criminals.

It is now the case that the majority of detainees at Dungavel are foreign national prisoners awaiting deportation or release. That means the population at the Scottish immigration detention centre has changed significantly from failed asylum seekers who pose little or no risk to each other or staff, to hardened criminals released from the prison system. The staff are not prison officers but relative newcomers to security work, most of whom have less than one year's experience. The Scottish Government has pledged - as did the previous executive - opposition to forcible removal of children and their detention at Dungavel, and representations have been made about allowing some of the "legacy cases" of asylum-seeking families who have become genuinely settled in Scotland to stay here. The new policy of detaining serious criminals along with failed asylum seekers at Dungavel, however, demands much more urgent action. People convicted in this country of crimes such as rape, the sexual abuse of children and fraud have forfeited any consideration of being granted asylum here. There is no good reason why the system cannot swing into action to prepare for their deportation immediately on release from prison. That would mean they can be detained safely while serving their sentence and taken from custody to the airport without becoming the responsibility of staff who are not fully-trained prison officers and who have a duty to ensure that no harm comes to their other, vulnerable charges.

The First Minister cannot pledge, as he did in June, to act as if the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child were in force in relation to the children of asylum seekers without insisting that such children are not held alongside serious criminals. There is also the question of Dungavel itself. If there are exceptional cases where some interim holding facility between prison and deportation is necessary, the former shooting lodge of the Dukes of Hamilton is not the right place. Recent inspections have found it better than immigration removal centres in England largely because it is not run as a lock-down prison, but that makes it entirely unsuitable for criminals awaiting deportation. Detaining them in Dungavel effectively imposes a punitive prison regime on innocent families.