An immigration removal centre is not a hotel, nor simply another public service to be purchased from a supplier. It is a place where the state exercises one of its gravest powers: restricting a person’s liberty before a criminal conviction, often in connection with a proposed removal. That distinction is at the heart of
Integrazione o ReImmigrazione, an Italian programme of migration reform which makes integration its objective and treats lawful, individually assessed return as one possible outcome. The programme accepts that removal facilities may be necessary when the law permits their use. Its more demanding proposition is that the state should run such centres directly rather than contract their daily management to private firms. This is not an argument that every contractor mistreats detainees. It is an argument about who ought to exercise coercive public authority in a constitutional democracy.
Britain offers an instructive comparison precisely because its approach is different. In a Home Office announcement dated 20 February 2020, the Government awarded Serco the management of Brook House and Tinsley House, with the contract beginning on 21 May 2020. It promised more welfare staff, stronger safeguarding, improved training and contractual monitoring, with financial penalties possible if standards declined. The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory briefing of 12 December 2024 likewise identifies private companies among the operators of Britain’s main immigration removal centres. These records show a deliberate division of labour: the Home Office retains legal responsibility for immigration detention while contractors operate significant parts of the estate. They do not show that contracting is inherently unlawful; they expose a constitutional choice that deserves closer scrutiny.
The consequences of that division cannot be evaluated solely from procurement documents. The Brook House Inquiry, published on 19 September 2023, examined the treatment of detainees during April to August 2017, when G4S operated the centre. It documented serious failures and made recommendations for reform. It would be inaccurate to present those events as occurring in 2026, or to attribute the same conduct automatically to a later contractor. A separate and more recent legal test came on 15 December 2025: in AH and IS v Secretary of State for the Home Department, [2025] EWHC 3269 (Admin), the High Court found that the operation of safeguards under Rule 35 at Brook House had breached the Home Secretary’s systems duty under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights during the relevant 2023–24
period. The case summary published by counsel explains the ruling. The judgment did not declare all private detention contracts unlawful.
It is here that the Italian proposal acquires a significance beyond the familiar demand for better inspections. A ReImmigrazione.com article of 2 November 2026 on publicly managed removal centres examined clinical independence and the difficulties created by fragmented service contracts. The earlier discussion left a more fundamental question open: if the state remains legally answerable for a deprivation of liberty that others administer, why should operational command be separated from public authority at all? The author’s conference intervention of 10 October 2026 makes the proposed answer explicit: Italian Centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio, or CPRs, should be staffed, organised and managed by public bodies alone. This is a proposal to change Italian law and administration, not a description of the present system or an assertion that the United Kingdom must adopt an Italian scheme.
The new argument is therefore about the institutional unity of coercion. A minister cannot transfer the legal duty to respect liberty and dignity simply by signing a service agreement, even when that agreement specifies training, performance indicators and penalties. A court may still hold the public authority responsible for failures in the detention system; the Brook House litigation is a particularly serious illustration of the persistence of that obligation. Yet legal liability after the event is not the same as having an integrated public chain of command on the ground.
ReImmigrazione would bring administration, staffing, operating standards and responsibility for the daily exercise of custody into a public service. Independent clinicians would still have to exercise their own professional judgment. The purpose is not to make detention easier or harsher; it is to make each lawful restriction of liberty transparently attributable to the public institution that orders it.
There is a substantial objection. A commercial operator may possess specialist experience, respond flexibly to staffing needs and be subject to contractual sanctions, independent monitoring and inspection. Public institutions are not incapable of abuse, and a change of employer would not by itself improve healthcare, prevent excessive force or establish effective routes of complaint. The 2020 Home Office contract announcement itself reflects the view that outsourced management can be reformed through measurable obligations and supervision. The Italian approach must answer with more than a statement of principle: direct management would require trained public officers, reliable budgets, open inspection, effective medical safeguards and published performance information. A public monopoly on custody would be legitimate only if it produced demonstrably accountable custody, not another institution shielded from outside criticism.
Nor does the proposal alter the legal conditions for deprivation of liberty. In Italy, administrative detention is governed by Article 14 of Legislative Decree 286/1998, within constitutional, European Union and Convention safeguards; a new public-management system would still require legislative implementation and individual legal scrutiny. In Britain, immigration detention rests on its own statutory framework and Convention obligations, and decisions remain subject to judicial review and other forms of legal challenge. The United Kingdom is not governed by the EU Return Directive, while Italy must comply with applicable EU law. Neither country may equate failed integration with automatic detention or removal. For ReImmigrazione, a negative personal assessment can lead to return only where an enforceable decision and every relevant guarantee permit it. Public management cannot transform an otherwise unlawful detention into a lawful one.
This is why the question of detention belongs inside a theory of integration rather than in an isolated dispute about contractors. The Paradigm proposes a continuous policy: govern entry, offer real opportunities, evaluate individual obligations, consolidate lawful residence where justified and carry out return only when the law allows. If the final stage requires the exceptional use of custody, political responsibility cannot disappear at the doors of a privately operated centre. The British experience supplies a test, not a verdict: an inquiry into past mistreatment, contractual promises of reform and a later judicial finding concerning state safeguards can all be true at once. The further proposition advanced here is that a state which insists on enforceable immigration decisions should be willing to administer the corresponding deprivation of liberty in its own name. That is a political and
institutional reform to debate openly, not a substitute for the rights of the person detained.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Lawyer authorised to practise before the Italian Court of Cassation
Registered in the Chamber of Deputies’ Register of Interest Representatives in the field of Immigration
Lobbyist registered in the European Union Transparency Register No. 280782895721-36 in the field of Migration and Asylum
ORCID: 0009-0004-7030-0428
Article prepared with the assistance of AI tools, under the direction, review and editorial responsibility of the author.
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