8 Shining light on detention centres and advancing migrants’ rights Despite the fact that more than 100,000 migrants transparency. Data is inaccessible or incomplete, are detained in Europe every year. there is still little and physical access by researchers and NGOs is public scrutiny of what happens inside detention often denied or limited.11 On the other hand, migrants’ centres. On the one hand, the management of voices are systematically silenced while in detention. 10 these sites by governments or private actors lacks Communicating with the outside world Depending on the country, the use of mobile and should have regular access to a telephone or phones, smartphones and internet devices is either their mobile phones”.14 In practice, this recommen- prohibited or restricted. Restrictions on the use of dation is widely disregarded. 12 smartphones are usually justified due to privacy or security grounds. These limitations are rarely based In several EU countries (including Austria, Belgium, on individualised orders applying a proportionality Bulgaria, France, Poland), people in immigration test. Instead, they are the consequence of practices detention are only allowed to keep and use mobile and bureaucratic decisions. There is no codified rule phones without a camera. 15 Since smartphones on the right to communication while in adminis- (which include cameras) are nowadays much more trative detention at the European level. However, common than phones without cameras, this results the 2017 position of the European Committee for in the fact that most people in detention are in the Prevention of Torture and Human or Degrading practice prohibited from using their personal phones. Treatment or Punishment (CPT)13 suggested that In federal or regional states, such as Germany and people in detention “should have every opportunity to Italy, the use of phones varies in different regions remain in meaningful contact with the outside world or centres. In some facilities in Italy, mobile phones 10 Global Detention Project, 2022, Annual Report. 11 See Jesuit Refugee Service Europe, 2023, Visiting Migrants in Detention. How it is and how it should be. 12 In the United States and Australia, mobile phones use in immigration detention is prohibited. Many EU countries confiscate migrants’ personal phones, as they do not allow the use of smartphones. See Global Detention Project, 2021, Overview United States; Global Detention Project, 2022, Overview Australia. 13 Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), 2017, Immigration detention factsheet. 14 Ibid., p.3. 15 EMN, 2018, Ad-Hoc Query on Ad-hoc query on detention and material detention conditions. Computers (with internet) are accessible on a regular basis, but this varies from one centre to another. Information provided by Jesuit Refugee Service Belgium.