Ministers will today promise to send thousands of foreign criminals home in a bid to free capacity in prisons.
There are 10,500 prisoners from abroad in England and Wales, up from the 9,300 in jails before the pandemic.
Under new plans, they will be deported earlier in their sentence and banned from returning to the UK where they cost taxpayers around £500million each year.
Alex Chalk KC, justice secretary, said: “It’s right that foreign criminals are punished but it cannot be right that some are sat in prison costing taxpayers £47,000 a year when they could be deported.
“Instead of letting foreign nationals take up space in our prisons at vast expense to the law-abiding public we will take action to get them out of the country and stop them from ever returning.”
Currently, foreign criminals can be removed up to a year before the end of their sentence. This will be brought forward six months, potentially saving £70,000 per prisoner.
The Government is working on plans to remove those convicted of less serious crimes more quickly. It also wants to put in place new prisoner transfer deals – like the one agreed recently with Albania that will ensure inmates from overseas serve their time in their home country.
Mr Chalk will set out his plans to step up removing these offenders, as part of wider reforms to the justice system, in a
statement to Parliament today.
He will also confirm that the Government will bring forward legislation to allow prisoners to be held – no matter where they are from – in prisons overseas.
This is similar to steps taken by Belgium and Norway, which have used foreign prison places in the Netherlands in the past decade.
The jail population hit a record high for modern times last week, leaving just over 550 spare places in the system.
There were 88,225 inmates behind bars in England and Wales on Friday, up more than 200 in a week. It beat the previous peak of 88,179 set in late 2011.
It is the highest total since modern records began in 1900.
Mark Fairhurst, chairman of the Prison Officers Association, said: “There is no room left at the inn.”
He added: “Cells that are designed for one are getting shared by two and people are banged up for long periods, not because of the pressure on the system, it’s because we can’t recruit staff or retain staff. We really are in a crisis I have never witnessed in over 30 years in the job.”
