More foreign prisoners are to be deported in a bid to ease pressure on Britain’s booming prison population.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk has already signalled plans to send fewer “low-level offenders” to prison, as he prepares to set out a range of reforms covering England and Wales later on Monday.
The announcement will also see plans to bring forward legislation that would allow prisoners to be held overseas, a move that the government said follows steps taken by Belgium and Norway.
It comes amid serious concerns about overcrowding in British prisons, with 88,225 people currently incarcerated in England and Wales.
The Ministry of Justice said that over 3,100 foreign criminals have already been removed in the year to March, but 10,500 remain locked up in England and Wales.
Under new plans, foreign offenders will be removed sooner from their sentences with more caseworkers deployed to speed up removals.
Currently, foreign criminals can be removed up to a year before the end of their sentence.
Community Work
Officials are also looking at what more can be done to remove foreign offenders convicted of less serious offences more quickly, with plans to introduce new conditions to ban those convicted from returning to the UK.“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,” Mr. Chalk told PA news agency.
“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.”
He suggested prisoners could instead clean up neighbourhoods, scrub graffiti off walls or plant forests.
The Lord Chancellor also confirmed plans that would see rapists forced to serve their full sentence in prison.
No Space
Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood labelled it a “half-baked plan.”“Removals of foreign national offenders have plummeted by 40 percent since 2010 under the Conservatives,” she said.
“This half-baked plan is a huge admission of failure by the government. Labour has been calling for years for the Tories to get a grip on the increasing numbers of foreign offenders in our prison system and yet no action has been taken.
Ms. Mahmood said Labour has a “fully costed plan” to recruit 1,000 more staff to a new returns unit in the Home Office, funded by ending the use of costly hotels to house asylum seekers, currently costing the taxpayer £8 million a day.
She added, “We will get on top of the prison crisis by prioritising the delivery of all 20,000 prison places we need to put criminals behind bars where they belong.”
Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governors’ Association, said there are only around 300 spaces left in men’s jails as the UK’s prison population reached a record high.
On Friday, 88,000 prisoners were recorded occupying cells—the highest figure since records began in 1900.
Inmate numbers have increased by 10,000 within two years, with the female estate now running at 96 percent capacity and male jails running at more than 99.6 percent capacity.
According to the Telegraph, governors fear the number of convicted male criminals and suspects held on remand will hit its maximum capacity this week as the courts ramp up their sittings following the summer break.
Ms. Albutt told the newspaper: “We are now bust on prison places. We will be lucky if we get through this week.”
