UK NEWS
£1M-A-DAY JAILS SCANDAL
John Reid has been criticised by Damian Green
By Tom Whitehead
FOREIGN prisoners clogging up Britain’s overcrowded jails are costing the taxpayer more than £1million a day.
And the number of overseas crooks locked up is rising, making a mockery of John Reid’s pledge to make more serve their sentences in their home countries.
There are 12,122 foreigners behind bars, costing the taxpayer £398million a year to keep. They include 879 whose nationality the prison service does not know.
The revelation comes less than a month after figures revealed that the prisons crisis is costing an extra £5million a month to hold inmates in emergency accommodation.
Critics yesterday said the figures show Mr Reid has failed to make any headway with the crisis, despite taking over as Home Secretary in the wake of last year’s foreign-prisoners scandal.
Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: “These figures are truly shocking. They show what happens when the Government loses control of our borders. We seem to attract criminals from all over the world, and the British taxpayer ends up paying for them.”
Figures released to Mr Green showed that in February, there were 12,122 foreign criminals in our jails – 15 per cent of the total prison population of 79,581. It means a sharp rise on the 10,231 in June last year, even though Mr Reid had promised to work to cut the number.
The Government estimates that it costs £32,888 a year to keep a prisoner, meaning an annual bill of £398.7million, or £1.1million a day.
Mr Reid has already admitted that the huge number of foreign inmates is one of the key reasons for overcrowded jails. He has even resorted to “bribes” to encourage more to serve their time in prisons in their home countries, or to return once their sentences are completed, instead of fighting deportation. He announced last October that inmates from outside the European Economic Area who are willing to return would be eligible for the equivalent of up to £2,500 in “kind” support. But only 100 have so far taken up the offer.
A further deal with EU partners to swap inmates will not come into effect for another two years.
In all, 164 nationalities are represented in British jails: the largest contingents come from Jamaica (1,490) and Nigeria (1,070).
Another 879 inmates are classified as having “unrecorded” nationality – although the Prison Service insists that most of those will now be known.
It is further embarrassment for Mr Reid, already struggling to solve a prisons crisis which regularly sees crooks held in police cells. Operation Safeguard, as it is called, has cost £23million over five months.
In an added farce, it emerged last summer that some foreign prisoners are using human-rights laws to sue for thousands of pounds because they are not being kicked out of Britain quickly enough.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “In the past year, a record number of foreign national prisoners have been removed from the UK – an increase of over 40 per cent in comparison to the previous equivalent period, with 2,240 removed.
“The Government has also brought forward legislative proposals to speed up deportation.”
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SEND THEM BACK...
03.05.07, 12:57pm
Why is it they are so often just allowed to roam free when released from gaol? Any foreign national convicted of an imprisonable offence should be automatically escorted to the airport and send back to their country of origin after completing their sentance. This should be mandatory and not at judicial discretion.
• Posted by: marcoscu • Report Comment
THE THREE STOOGES!
03.05.07, 8:46am
Border policies which allows scum from around the world to arrive unvetted allowscriminals fleeing justice in their homelands to arrive in the UK and recommence their lives of crime.
Only this time safe in the knowledge that instead of the rat infested hell hole they deserve if court they will live in Holiday camps.
The figures printed are still inaccurate the many thousand criminals housed in detention centres around the UK are not included.
The offences not recorded or investigated by the police because offenders are asylum seekers or illegals are also not included, offences such as burglary, robbery, and fraud uninvestigated.
A complete prison service for Illegal and asylum seekers exists run privately and with its own rules, burn down the accommodation to get bail.
Foriegn criminals jailed in the UK out number the number of indeigenous criminals jailed in the UK many times.
The three stooges RIED, BLIAR, and BROWN encourage this criminal scum to enter the UK daily and then provide millions of pounds to fund Human Rights litigation foreign scum in our jails costs twice as much to keep as English scum.
Huntley got £1000 TOO MUCH legal aid while Islamic scum terrorists got £100,000 to £500,000 EACH.
LEAVE EUROPE NOW, FLOOD THE TUNNEL CLOSE THE BORDERS AND SEND THE SCUM HOME WHERE IT BELONGS!
• Posted by: The_Way_I_See_It • Report Comment
MORE TAX T PAY
03.05.07, 8:34am
THE POLITICIANS ARE GETTING MORE STUPID. ANY CRIMINALS FROM ABROAD SHOULD BE SENT BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM, IMMEDIATELY. BY THEIR PASSPORTS.THE COUNTRY CAN TAKE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THEM WHEN THEY GET THERE FROM ENGLAND. ITS NO WONDER WE HAVE TO PAY TOP MUCH TAX. THE POLITICIANS NEED EDUCATING. GOOD AND HARD. HAL
• Posted by: chilvers12 • Report Comment
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