The United Kingdom’s prison service has launched an international recruitment drive, hiring prison officers from Nigeria and other nations to address staffing shortages.
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However, the initiative has been marred by reports of some recruits being forced to live in their cars or temporary accommodations due to housing constraints, The Telegraph reports.
The UK prison service is, for the first time, sponsoring skilled worker visas for overseas workers after a change in the rules enabled them to recruit from abroad.
Prison governors say many of the recruits have come from Nigeria and include not only skilled workers but also some switching from other visa routes.
The Prison Officers Association (POA), according to The Telegraph, has reported cases of overseas recruits turning up on their first day assuming they would be given accommodation along with their job.
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The president of the POA, Mark Fairhurst, said one foreign recruit was commuting 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work but then decided it was cheaper to sleep in his car outside the prison.
He said that at another jail, foreign-recruited prison officers had set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison where they were working after discovering that there was no accommodation provided with the job.
“We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow and with their families saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?’” said Mr. Fairhurst.
Their recruitment follows a change in visa rules in October 2023 that included prison officers on the list of skilled workers eligible for sponsorship.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) sources suggested that up to 250 foreign nationals have so far been sponsored to work in the prison service after passing through their Zoom interviews and vetting.
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Prison governors believe there are significantly more applicants, including those switching from other visas. They claimed that in one month last year, two-thirds of the 3,500 would-be recruits were from Africa.
Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), said the demand appeared to have been fueled by word of mouth online.
“It’s turned into an approach that has been promoted online by the expat Nigerian community,” he said.
He said it had created difficulties in some prisons where there were a disproportionate number of foreign prison staff and, in remote rural areas, issues over their integration into the local community.
He added that there had also been issues with language and communication in some jails.
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