Between 2020 and 2023, only 24% of migrants hosted in the Macomer CPR were repatriated, a figure significantly lower than the national average.
This is one of the data that emerges from the report “Retained 2024” by Action Aid Italia .
The dossier provides a snapshot of the Sardinian repatriation detention center and lists several data.
THE NUMBERS – In the period 2020-2023, for example, the CPR of Macomer recorded an average of 43 daily presences and 222 annual admissions, 273 in 2023. Many inmates enter it: the percentage of admissions from prison (29% in the period and 28% in 2023) is significantly higher than the national average.
The average length of stay was 68 days (almost double the national average) , 52 days in 2023, and the incidence of repatriations was 24% (half the national average for the period), 36% in 2023. The average percentage of exits due to expiration of detention terms was also much higher than the national average, reaching 48% of entries (29% in 2023).
EX-PRISONERS – «The CPR of Macomer – we read in the Action Aid report – in fact functions as an offshoot of the prison . This fact can perhaps be explained by the material configuration of the centre, which is hosted by a former maximum security prison and which could make it, in the eyes of the Ministry of the Interior, a suitable structure to host ex-prisoners».
"The data on people released from prison combined with the average length of stay and the high percentage of releases due to expiration of terms show that people released from prison are nevertheless more difficult to expel and, consequently, remain detained longer ", comments Giuseppe Campesi of the University of Bari, one of the leading experts in Italy on administrative detention and repatriations. He adds: "The additional period of detention is therefore doubly afflictive , since it is largely unjustified in light of the low probability of carrying out a repatriation".
COSTS – The report also analyses the costs for managing the centre, considered “exorbitant”. In the period 2020-2023, the CPR of Macomer had an average per capita per day of €37.94 (€40.18 in 2023), well above the national average. In the same period, the overall cost of the facility was over €5 million, of which 41% was spent on extraordinary maintenance costs. Again, in 2023 the CPR of Macomer cost a total of just over a million euros, for an average cost of a single place of almost €21 thousand”.
"Exorbitant costs - the dossier continues - but underestimated, since they do not include "ancillary costs" such as those related to the presence of law enforcement officers engaged in guarding the facility. In Macomer, for example, it costs more to guarantee them just food and lodging than to manage the CPR: 5 million and 800 thousand euros between 2020 and 2023 which, added to what was spent on the facility alone, bring the average cost of a place to exceed 52 thousand euros in 2023".
"In the Sardinian context - concludes the note from the association - these policies seem to be in fact determining a worrying change in the employment vocation of the territory, to the point of basing local employment precisely on the induced activity generated by the former maximum security prison".
(Online Union)