By an order issued on 23 January 2026, the Court of Appeal of Bologna, acting through a single judge, refused to confirm an immigration detention measure imposed by the police authorities on a foreign national held in an Italian immigration detention centre. The legal significance of the decision does not lie in an easy or sympathetic factual background. On the contrary, the individual concerned had a history of multiple and serious criminal convictions, including offences of considerable gravity.
This element is crucial to understanding the broader implications of the ruling. In the United Kingdom, as in many other European jurisdictions, public debate often assumes that serious criminal convictions should automatically justify immigration detention and removal. The Bologna decision challenges that assumption, not on political or moral grounds, but through a strictly legal analysis rooted in constitutional principles.
The court does not minimise the seriousness of the past criminal conduct. It expressly acknowledges it and incorporates it into its reasoning. What the court rejects is the automatic transformation of past convictions into present-day dangerousness. Under the Italian constitutional framework, which in this respect mirrors core principles familiar to common law systems, immigration detention is regarded as an exceptional interference with personal liberty. As such, it must be justified by current, concrete and individualised circumstances.
The focus of the decision is therefore temporal as much as substantive. The criminal sentence had been fully served. During its execution, the competent judicial authorities had issued repeated positive assessments. No breaches had been recorded during periods of supervised liberty. At the time of the detention order, the individual was in stable employment and had established family ties. On this basis, the court concluded that there was no evidence of a present and concrete risk sufficient to justify continued detention.
The legal reasoning is clear and uncompromising. Immigration detention cannot function as a hidden extension of criminal punishment. Once a sentence has been served, the coercive power of the state must find a new and autonomous legal justification. Without proof of present dangerousness, detention becomes disproportionate and unlawful.
This is where the decision acquires particular relevance for a UK audience. It highlights a structural distinction that is often blurred in political discourse: the difference between individualised legal assessment and category-based exclusion. The court’s approach confirms that the rule of law does not permit deprivation of liberty on the basis of labels or past status alone. Liberty may be restricted only where necessity is demonstrated in the present.
The ruling also clarifies the legal meaning of integration in this context. Integration is not treated as a reward or a discretionary concession, but as a factual and legally relevant condition. When integration is effective and no current threat is established, it operates as a legal limit on administrative power. Where integration fails, or where a present risk is shown, removal and detention remain available tools within the legal framework. What is excluded is automaticity.
The broader lesson of the Bologna decision is that difficult cases are precisely those in which constitutional systems reveal their coherence. Upholding legal standards in situations involving serious criminal histories does not weaken public security. On the contrary, it reinforces it by ensuring that state power is exercised within clearly defined legal boundaries. The primacy of effective integration affirmed by the court is not an act of leniency, but a reaffirmation of due process as the foundation of legitimate migration control.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Attorney at Law – Bologna Bar
Lobbyist registered in the EU Transparency Register
ID 280782895721-36
Lascia un commento