Much has already been written about CPRs. It has been said that they are inhumane, violent, and unacceptable. All true. But that's not enough. The problem is no longer proving what happens inside CPRs, but understanding why they exist. ---- Today, 10 repatriation detention centers are active in Italy, distributed throughout the country: Turin, Milan, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Macomer, Palazzo San Gervasio, Rome, Bari, Brindisi, Caltanissetta, and Trapani. Almost all are located in isolated areas, out of sight and difficult to access. The overall capacity is limited and, in many cases, lower than declared: a significant portion of places remain unused even when formally available.
CPRs hold people who have not committed crimes but are in an administratively irregular situation. Detention can last up to 18 months. But the crucial statistic is another: in 2024, only 41.8% of detained people were actually repatriated. For the majority, detention doesn't even serve its stated purpose.Yet the system isn't being scaled back. It's being strengthened: closed centers are reopened after riots and fires, new facilities are being designed, and public resources continue to be invested in an ineffective system. This means one simple thing: CPRs aren't there to function. They exist for something else. They aren't for repatriation, they're for discipline.
Administrative detention transforms a bureaucratic condition into guilt and creates a clear boundary between those who have rights and those who can be deprived of them. Inside CPRs, time isn't just long: it's empty. People often don't receive adequate information about their rights, have limited access to legal and healthcare assistance, and live in isolation. The effects are evident: acts of self-harm, suicide attempts, fires, protests. These aren't exceptions, but the norm. In this sense, the CPRs are not an anomaly, but part of a broader picture. In recent years, a model based on repression and control has strengthened: criminalization of dissent, restrictions on freedom of demonstration, increased administrative measures with fewer guarantees, attacks on solidarity. The CPRs are precisely within this transformation.
They are places where what we then tend to generalize is experienced: detention without crime, institutional opacity, reduction of rights, privatized management of people's lives. This is not a malfunction, it is a model. What is being applied to migrants today represents a political laboratory, a preview.
This is why simply denouncing the violence of the CPRs is not enough. The problem is not only what happens inside those centers, but the fact that they exist and are considered normal. The "security" that justifies them is not a response to social problems, but a device that produces control.
Closing the CPRs is necessary, but it is not enough if we do not question the logic that created them. Because we're not dealing with a mistake that needs fixing, but with a system that works exactly as it should.
Totò Caggese
https://umanitanova.org/cpr-repressione-e-controllo-chiudere-tutti-i-lager/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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