More modern and appropriate regulations for detention

“Increasing returns is a priority issue for the Government. Detention has been of major importance in ensuring that the system works well. But it’s also a matter of creating safer and more secure detention for both employees and detainees. The possibility to detain aliens must be used in an effective and legally certain manner,” says Minister for Migration Maria Malmer Stenergard.

An individual may be detained to ensure that the authorities have access to them so that an expulsion order can be enforced. Being detained means that the individual stays at a locked housing facility run by the Swedish Migration Agency until a refusal-of-entry or expulsion order can be carried out. For the enforcement process to be as effective as possible, it is important that the regulations under Swedish law are not more restrictive than is permitted under EU law.

The starting point for the remit is that Swedish law should fully correspond to the possibilities for detention permitted under EU law. Within the framework of the review, the Inquiry is to pay particular attention to certain issues, including: 

• considering whether it should be possible to detain aliens in more situations than at present;
• reviewing the time limits for detention, i.e. how long a person may be detained;
• considering whether there should be more possibilities to search detainees, their rooms and belongings;
• considering whether it should be possible to order the presence of security guards in connection with transport and surveillance of detainees; 
• determining whether there are measures that can improve the way care for detainees is organised; and 
• examining whether electronic surveillance could be a practical complement to detention.

The remits on searching detainees and their rooms and belongings, and on security guards in connection with transport and surveillance, are to be presented in an interim report by 10 January 2024. The other parts of the remit are to be presented in a report by 17 February 2025.

The Inquiry Chair is Senior Judge of Appeal Johan Lundmark.