09/12/2009 Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
The use of detention as a response to the arrival of asylum seekers and irregular immigrants has significantly increased in Council of Europe member states and resulted in mass and needless detention. According to a report adopted by the PACE Migration Committee in Paris on 9 December, capacity had risen 10-fold since the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, France had increased it from 739 in 2003 to 1724 in 2007, Italy’s Lampedusa centre counted 1800 detainees instead of the 800 it has capacity for.
The Committee said it was concerned by the excessive use of detention as it should only be used as a last resort and not as a deterrent. It said it was unacceptable that conditions and safeguards afforded to immigration detainees who have committed no crime, were worse than those of criminal detainees. The Committee will therefore present 10 guiding principles on the legality of detention and 15 rules governing minimum standards of conditions in detention centres at the PACE winter session in Strasbourg (25-29 January 2010).