Only one foreign prisoner a week is being transferred to serve their sentence in their home country because many are given a choice, official figures show.
The UK has prisoner transfer agreements with more than 100 countries, allowing long-term prisoners to be removed from the UK and serve their sentences in their home nations.
There are 10,500 foreign nationals in English and Welsh prisons, each of whom costs taxpayers around £40,000 a year, at a time when there is a prisons overcrowding crisis.
While some prisoner transfer agreements allow for compulsory repatriations, many are voluntary and require the prisoner’s consent.
Ministry of Justice figures, released by Edward Argar, the prisons minister, show that the powers were used just 50 times in 2022 and only 23 times in the first 11 months of last year.
In a 14-year period from 2010 to December last year, a total of 935 foreign prisoners were sent home under prisoner transfer agreements, an average of 68 per year, according to Mr Agar’s figures.
They went to 49 countries including Pakistan, India, Turkey, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ireland.
None was sent to Jamaica, despite a prisoner transfer agreement signed in 2015 in return for the UK contributing £25 million in foreign aid to help build a new jail.
When the agreement was announced by Lord Cameron, then the prime minister, it was claimed that 300 would be transferred.
“If you were a prisoner offered a chance to serve your sentence in some of these countries’ jails, it is not surprising that you’d say ‘no thanks’ or go to court saying it would breach your human rights due to jail conditions there,” said a prison service source.
Other schemes to remove prisoners from the UK have proved more successful. About 1,500 are removed each year via the Early Removal Scheme – but this for prisoners nearing the end of their sentence in the UK. They do not go to jail in their homeland but are set free on arrival.
Others are deported after serving their entire sentence in UK prisons. Between January 2019 and September last year, a total of 16,676 foreign national offenders were removed from the UK.
As part of a package of measures to tackle overcrowding, Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, announced additional plans to rent around 600 cells in foreign countries, which are likely to be used to decant foreign prisoners from UK jails.
Last autumn, jails in England and Wales came close to running out of capacity, forcing hundreds of prisoners to be housed in police cells and the Government to introduce emergency early release schemes to ease the pressure.
Disclosing the latest figures in response to a written question from Grahame Morris, the Labour MP, Mr Argar said: “Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity.
“Where appropriate, the Government will also seek to permanently remove foreign criminals from the UK via the Early Removal Scheme once they have served the minimum required of their sentence.
“Our new prisoner transfer agreement with Albania entered into force in May 2023, and we have signed a new prisoner transfer agreement with the Philippines.
“We are looking to negotiate new prisoner transfer agreements with key EU member states and wider-world countries.”
A government spokesman said: “Prisoner transfer agreement are one part of a range of measures that have seen more than 17,000 foreign national offenders removed in the last five years.
“Our recent changes to the Early Removal Scheme and new prisoner transfer agreements will mean even more can be removed, protecting the public and saving the taxpayer the £47,000 a year cost of imprisoning them here.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
