Translated by Angela Tagliafierro
Twenty-six years of “RDC”, namely Return Detention Centres (also known in Italian as CPR). During the years, they have taken several names, such as Centres for Temporary Stay or Centres for Identification and Expulsion, but their essence has never changed.
Set up by the Legislative Decree Dini and later become real through the law Turco-Napolitano, in the years they have been regulated by many National Legislative Provisions. The last one has been the Legislative Decree so-called Decree Cutro, converted into the Law n. 50 of May 05th, 2023: the article 10 establishes the RDCs’ strengthening.
According to the Legislative Decree n. 286/1998, the so-called Consolidated Text on Immigration, which regulates the RDCs, the prefect entrusts the management of these centres to private entities through calls or competitive bidding processes. During 2023, the supervision of the detention system for foreigners was largely delegated to entities explicitly for-profit, sometimes including even major multinationals. Furthermore, the maximum period of detention has been recently extended to eighteen months.
Even though they are not a prison, the current nine Return Detention Centres working in Italy are surrounded by high walls, barbed wire and cameras on the whole boundaries. They are also constantly presided over by the law enforcement. These centres aim to detain temporarily foreign citizens, who are therefore in a state of administrative detention, waiting for the execution of expulsion orders. The law considers like foreign citizens all those who enter the country without a residency permit, those who lose this condition even for reasons beyond their control, such as the loss of employment, and those who seek asylum because they are fleeing persecution or war in their country of origin. It should be specified that detention does not depend on having committed a crime.
Thus, since detention is not sanctioned by the prison code, the RDCs lack their own regulatory system, which implies the absence of primary rules regulating the internal life of the persons detained. In other words, this lack also means a precarious capacity to establish, and thus protect, the human rights that should be respected within them.
Several problems have to be faced within these facilities, which restrict certain rights of the detained migrants, such as the right to defence or the right to information or the right to health, whether it be physical or mental.
As a matter of fact, the health assistance in the RDCs has been criticized for a long time. The procedure requires that, in the first instance, a screening by a doctor of the National Health Service of the psychophysical conditions of the subject is carried out to verify the suitability to be detained in these facilities. Subsequently, the detained subjects should be followed by the centre's doctor, usually chosen by the private managing bodies and not within the NHS, and by a 24-hour nursing service. However, in the report drawn up on the Milan RDCs, it was stated by the Guarantor of the Rights of Persons Deprived of their Liberty that the doctors selected to serve in the RDCs would not have specific experience or training related to the health needs of migrants under administrative detention. The report also shows how the sanitary conditions in the centres are collapsing and how this, consequently, influences the physical health of the detained persons. In addition, there has reportedly been a significant reduction in the number of medical and health personnel in recent years, with a decrease in the presence of specialised professionals, such as social workers and psychologists.
This sheds a light on an important, critical issue, namely the way in which the mental health of a detained person is managed. The precariousness of one's social situation, combined with the lack of educational and recreational paths in the facilities, not being prisons, creates obvious fragilities in detained persons, fragilities that have led to many cases of self-harm and suicide. To remedy these problems, the answer seems to have a name: psychotropic drugs. In fact, it has been reported in recent years that psychotropic drugs have been administered to the people detained in the centres without a proper treatment plan. It has also been reported that psychotropic drugs have been administered without providing careful prescriptions that consider the real pathologies of the detained person. This would also be evident from the presence in the expenses in the RDCs' budget of large numbers of antipsychotics, antiepileptic drugs or creams and gels that treat, for instance, scabies, according to what reported by the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI) and the voluntary association Naga, which collected data on the drugs purchased for the Milan RDC between October 2021 and February 2022. Some testimonies of former workers in the RDCs have also raised doubts about the presence or absence of the detained person's consent to take drugs they do not know because they are different from those authorised for the administration.
In lack of transparency of the facilities and fragility of the detained person, it is evident that doctors play a fundamental role in respecting the right to health of the detained individuals. This influence takes place from the very first moment, i.e. from the screening to declare or not the suitability for detention in the centres, which is most often carried out in a very short time and with unclear modalities. For this reason, a joint appeal was made by the Italian Society of Migration Medicine, the 'No to RDCs' network and ASGI, mentioned above, to sensitise health personnel to respect their Code of Medical Deontology. This is especially noticeable in the passages where they establish the need for adequate time for the assessment of people's state of health and their informed consent, and where they also establish the protection, by the doctor, of the subject considered vulnerable. In particular, when he or she 'considers that the environment in which he or she lives is not suitable to protect his or her health, dignity and quality of life'.
This is a path of awareness of medical personnel and sensitisation of civil society that can be the key to overcoming the concept of administrative detention in favour of practices that provide for greater respect for the rights of the person in transit and their active involvement in the search for alternative solutions.
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