Foreign-Born Prisoners in UK Jails at Highest Level Since 2013

The number of foreigners in prisons for serious violent, sexual and theft offences has surged over the past year, according to official data published for the first time.

Some 1,731 foreign criminals are in prison in England and Wales for sexual offences, one in eight of the foreign ­offender prison population and 10.6 per cent of all sex offenders in prisons.

This number has risen by nearly 10 per cent in the past 12 months, a rate of increase nearly three times higher than that of British people imprisoned for sexual offences.

There were 10,722 foreign criminals and suspects occupying prison cells in England and Wales at the end of June as the British prison population fell, the Ministry of Justice figures show.

The number of foreign-born prisoners is now higher than at any point since 2013. They account for one in eight of the total prison population and cost an estimated £580 million per year.

Experts said the rise had been fuelled by record immigration since 2020 and by the large number of people in ­custody on remand awaiting trial. Judges are more likely to deny bail to foreign defendants because of the higher risk that they will leave the UK.

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Ben Brindle, of the Migration ­Observatory at the University of ­Oxford, said the younger age of the average migrant compared with the British population, as well as the higher likelihood that foreign defendants were denied bail, explained the increase.

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The overcrowding crisis in prisons has forced the government to introduce drastic early-release measures. These have led to an increase in the rate of reoffending.

Foreign prisoners make up 85 per cent of the populations in some London prisons. Albanian, Polish and Romanian prisoners account for a quarter of all foreign prisoners.

The number of foreign criminals in prison in England and Wales for ­violence against the person offences has risen by 8.8 per cent, compared with an ­increase of 4.8 per cent for British offenders. For robbery, there was a 7.8 per cent increase in foreign ­offenders, against a 5.5 per cent ­decrease in the number of British criminals imprisoned for the same crime.

Robert Bates, founder of the Centre for Migration Control, called for the Home Office to bring back the “red list”, which imposed tougher checks on ­people from nations with higher crime rates.

“This increase is the direct result of the post-Brexit immigration system introduced by the last government,” he said. {snip}

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