The two associations analyzed press reports, in particular those of local news, to document the stories of people arrested for driving a boat and ended up in prison because they were accused of aiding and abetting irregular immigration by sea.
The NGOs have tried to reconstruct the numbers of this phenomenon with the aim of demonstrating their thesis: that it is wrong to identify the people who lead the hulls as human traffickers.
In their opinion, the organizations that manage the trafficking of migrants - the real culprits of the phenomenon - are not affected by criminal proceedings, while individuals who are in turn exploited by the same organizations end up in the crosshairs, people with difficult histories who perhaps were only trying to put themselves in save.
