Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. 1 A facility in which people are detained (held in custody); a jail. 2 (context Australia English) An immigration detention facility; a facility in which people who have attempted to enter Australia without prior authorisation are detained, pending a decision on whether they are to be accepted as refugees or returned to their country of origin. 3 A concentration camp.
WordNet
n. a large cell where prisoners (people awaiting trial or sentence or refugees or illegal immigrants) are confined together temporarily [syn: bullpen, detention cell]
Usage examples of "detention centre".
In some cases there's considerable overlap and you can be trundled from one detention centre to the next while they try to work out who's job it is to give you the chopper.
They were being held at an immigrant detention centre, which offended Claudine although she accepted it was the most suitable place: they did, at least, have rooms to themselves and were not being kept in the usual dormitories, although the institutionalized smell of ineffective disinfectant, bad cooking and urine permeated everywhere.
In a book about football, the temptation to apologise (for Cambridge, and for not having left school at sixteen and gone on the dole, or down the pits, or into a detention centre) is overwhelming, but it would be entirely wrong to do so.