Italy has launched a tender to manage removal centres in Lampedusa (Photo: Valentina Pop)
A growing number of EU countries are using private security firms to guard migrant detention centres, raising questions about accountability if things go wrong.
Claire Rodier, one of the founders of the Paris-based Migreurop and author of the book Xenophobie Business, which traces defence and security industry in EU border controls, believes some member states are nonetheless heading towards allowing private security to run such centres.
“I think in Italy, it is something that will develop, especially because the associations that respond to the public tenders are not at all associations with a humanitarian vocation. They are profit-driven,” she said.
The blurring of the division of tasks between private security firms and the national police is emerging.
A study published in March by the Brussels-based Confederation of European Security Services (CoESS) argues that private companies can offer services that once belonged to the exclusive jurisdiction of the public authorities.
It lists as benefits, legal advantages like contractual freedom of choice, responsibility, and liability that eliminate “the excludability and rivalry which is sometimes present in public service provision.”
Possible expanding market domains include security guard services for detention centres and the transport of “illegal immigrants.”
Governments can save a lot of money by going down this route.
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