There are over 10,000 foreign prisoners in UK jails. In a recent poll more that 80% of those polled wanted serious offenders deported, including 80% of Lib Dem and Labour. voters with a higher percentage of Conservative and reform.
It us expensive to keep prisoners in jails. It is very dear to build extra orisons to keep up with surging demand. Successive government have been returning modest numbers and this government is now talking if sending some out of the country earlier in their sentence.
Why not take tge public advice and send more out of the country more quickly after conviction. Why do taxpayers have to pay more than £50,000 a year per prisoner, or over £500m a year to keep these people? Building new places for them is £600,000 per place or £6 bn to provide for 10,000.
June 27, 2025
Good morning.
The ECHR, or the misinterpretation of it by Judges, means that foreign criminals can misuse the ECHR to prevent their deportation. So the general public are put at risk by allowing criminals to remain in the UK.
June 27, 2025
We had promises to leave the ECHR don’t forget under which governments!
June 27, 2025
Indeed and Starmer (and Kemi just Sunak continued) still support the ECHR and net zero both insane policies.
So £600K per prison cell place – you can build three 1000 sq ft houses for that given the land. How can an extra 60 sq ft cell, at an existing prison cost ten times as much per sq ft? Is this state sector efficiency.
The Planet Normal podcast this week was addressing the disaster of the workers rights bill and what an appalling disaster it will be for anyone employing people or running a business and for productivity. This on top of other vast red tape, v. high taxes, net zero rip off energy… should do wonders to further kill any growth or incentive to invest – why bother take the risk – heads they win and tales you lose?
June 27, 2025
Our judges seem to treat the rights of criminal from foreign lands more generously than the rights of UK citizens to be protected.
With this and the recent attempt to have people from foreign descendancies treated different, it appears that the over-reach of our judicial is so great that it amounts to an attempt to form a power base that rivals Parliament
June 27, 2025
So the ECHRs is the reason used by our government to not deport foreign prisoners upon release ….its the ‘will’ of government, its a choice
June 28, 2025
South Africa left the UN Migration Scheme. We should too.
June 27, 2025
You miss the point John. Everyone else’s yooman rites take precedence over ours. With the current and previous AGs, even after serving their sentences they allowed to stay, many to continue a life of crime.
Yesterday’s news was an illegal criminal couldn’t be deported because it would have disrupted his sons alleged football chances. We all know about the fish finger debacle. We really are a laughing stock.
Now it appears that in return to France of some of the invaders we have to take a French asylum seeker in return. One for one. Who decides which dross we get, the French of course.
Let’s face it the government of all stripes likes mass immigration, criminals and all.
June 27, 2025
Sending guilty offenders back to their country of origin is better so long as they serve their full sentences there and are never allowed back into the UK. If a source country refuses to accept their miscreants back, we should stop all aid to them and cut their trade with us.
June 27, 2025
I think a more obvious response to other countries refusing to accept their own citizens back, is to immediately stop issuing further travel visas to that country. Why should we let anyone in, that we cannot return if we need or simply want to?
June 28, 2025
Yes. Refusal of visas is an important point that I omitted to mention in error.
June 27, 2025
Certainly some leverage is needed to force them to take back their criminals. But people often just relinquish their (for example) Pakistani citizenship and then are not deported by our courts and not accepted.
June 28, 2025
Allowing criminals to relinquish their citizenship is daft. They might just as well relinquish their debt if they had overspent, or relinquish their date of birth just because they want to be younger. If the UK is the country being affected, the UK should dictate its own rules on what is allowed in the UK.
June 27, 2025
I never knew the costs involved. £50,000 is the same as elite public school fees. We should not be paying this. We also want a clean country and that means tackling all crime including illegal migrants, foreign gangs and domestic criminals. The savings from deporting these 10,000 foreign criminals could be allocated to those purposes.
June 27, 2025
and not taking into account the costs of their criminal way of life or effect on society.
June 27, 2025
Perhaps we need to subcontract this to a country where land, energy, red tape and labour costs are circa 10% of the UKs. Or perhaps the prisoners should build the new spaces themselves? Or perhaps more should be out on tags with prisons sufficiently unpleasant that they never ever want to break their tag conditions and have to go back to prison?
June 27, 2025
Will new prisons have to have absurdly have to have solar cells on the roof as houses soon will. What an insane agenda to produce a little summer daytime electricity. Do the financial return sums!
June 27, 2025
The building materials to build one additional cell at a prison (for one or two) might costs only about £30-40k. So with free-ish prison labour available where does the £600k per person cell build cost come from?
June 27, 2025
Paul I am surprised it is only £50,000 per year, we had a family member who worked in the private prison service (yes we have privately run prisons, where costs are less) for a number of years, very many years ago costs were suggested to be even more way back then.
I guess it comes down to what the Government figures actually include as costs to get to those figures.
On top of these costs we have the huge costs of prosecution, trial, and all of the police time, then dilapidation and maintenance costs of buildings etc etc etc.
It was suggested at that time 20% of prisoners were not UK nationals way back then, so it is not a new problem.
Agree send them back with no right of return.
June 27, 2025
At that price lots of us might want our Care Home relative to move to prison instead.!
June 27, 2025
About one full time employee plus cost per prisoner. Prob. works out about 1 prison worker on duty for every 8 prisoner inmates – after holidays, training, sick leave, energy etc. is considered. Though a lot of the pay say 20% ish will come directly back to government in Tax and NI on the wages!
June 27, 2025
State sector sick leave is far higher than the private sector as are state sector pensions and state sector overheads needless to say.
June 27, 2025
Lifelogic
Broardmoor an HNS Hospital (not a prison as many believe) has staff ratio of about 10 for every patient I believe.
June 28, 2025
Perhaps but if that is true, then staff actually on duty at any one time will be more like 2 to 1.
June 27, 2025
Nothing will be done, most MPs no longer truly represent English interests – the continued escorting of members of the future prison population across the Channel each day in small boats proves it. Goodbye England it was nice knowing you and to remember how the English way of life used to be.
June 27, 2025
Indeed seems so alas.
June 27, 2025
The French will be the only beneficiaries of this deal. Macron and his apparatchiks will make sure that we get the mentally ill, the violent criminals, the class A drug dealers etc
Once the boat people get in, they get to live in a nice hotel, they get free NHS care, free schooling for their children and the other benefits of the British welfare state. Deny them all that and they will go somewhere else.
June 27, 2025
Our government said that 220 hotels are being used to house illegal immigrants …..I don’t believe them as over 30,000 arrived 2024/25 ….where are they all staying ?
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-01-21/debates/92B6A9F7-3483-43B9-AABD-914B92CF0DD8/AsylumSeekerHotelAccommodationReopening
June 27, 2025
if denied perhaps they would change to become caravan dwelling people?
June 27, 2025
The people, irrespective of political affiliation or ethnicity, have overwhelmingly spoken. They want convicted foreign criminals deported irrespective of the hostility they may face in their countries of origen. This could be a first step, to be followed by the deportation of a guesstimated 2 million illegals. Nobody knows the true figure.
To stop the inward flow we need a deterent, a solution that illegals do not want. My proposal is a POW style labour camp in West Falkland, or direct return to country of origen. Illegals will not pay people smuggling gangs for such a result. Consequently the POW camp will not need to be very big.
Against all such are the current government and the ruling blob. 2TK daily proves himself weak and vacillating, witness out of control welfare and his reluctance to abandon the ECHR and all the other pseudo legal world bodies that control his thinking.
You know that the time of reckoning moves ever closer, your contributors know it too. There is only one party that are set on draining the swamp while at the same time returning democracy to the people, where by definition it belongs. Watch the tide of politics flow towards Reform while all other parties crumble in the face of the inevitable.
June 27, 2025
I wonder how many prisoners have dual nationality? I favour their losing their British citizenship and being deported with their whole family – so that we are not depriving them of a family unification.
That would empty the jails.
June 27, 2025
Sending prisoners back to their own country seems one of the few sensible suggestions of recent time, particularly if the are made to serve out their sentences there, with any luck in far less luxurious conditions than they would enjoy here at our expense.
June 27, 2025
Good Morning
Makes total sense to repatriate foreign criminals but it’s not the only issue to be addressed. Many who are now British subjects are an even greater part of the prisoner-population plus they cause additional problems whilst incarcerated by all accounts. This aspect should be investigated/assessed too.
Withdrawal from the ECHR is a must, but there are so many other aspects on this subject that require serious attention.
June 27, 2025
We should charge their countries for their costs. The EHCR interpretations by UK left leaning judges prevent us sending them back but we can at least recoup the costs under threat of sanctions or not issuing further visas.
We then need to change our adherence to EHCR so it doesn’t apply to anyone displaying criminal behaviour (which should include illegal immigrants) and leave the UN Refugee convention until it is changed for modern life and transport opportunities..
June 27, 2025
Lack of patriotism.
The extreme left have no love of country. And sort of happy for it to go to pot if it affects enough rich people.
The extreme right are nationalists. This isn’t patriotism but just thinking one is superior to others.
Where as patriotism puts one’s family and country first without being arrogant about it. And welcomes foreign culture (Handel was German. Our medieval cathedrals were, to a degree, influenced by French architecture. Shakespeare was influenced, to a degree, by Italian Renaissance literature) but without being over-run by it and defending oneself from toxic foreign culture too.
And immigrants are welcome as long as they offer real value to our country so we have to focus on quality of skills they bring to our economy and culture.
June 27, 2025
What is most unacceptable is the cost of £50,000 per year to maintain a person in prison and the capital cost of £600,000 per prisoner to build a prison. This is just absurd and even more so when one considers many prisoners are in shared cells and are locked in for most of the time, sometimes 23 hours a day. It is just another example of the general malaise in the public sector that it is absurdly expensive and inefficient.
June 27, 2025
Also, one reason we need to support the churches is so that its leaders can challenge us of the need to donate to charities – both foreign and at home. But at end of day charity is a free choice. It cannot be imposed on people. Although an argument can be made for a country to give foreign aid to other countries. But that is more about geo-politics than charity. Although in some cases it can be more charity if it’s a mass natural disaster or something like that including man-made ones.
June 27, 2025
Couldn’t agree more.
Why are we keeping war criminals in prison in the UK;they should be deported immediately
Radovan Karadzic is a good example;He is in Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight where he is serving life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Why did he come from his trial in Europe to the UK and why did the UK accept this situation.
There must be many other similar instances of the UK agreeing to house foreign criminals.Why not send them back to their own countries to serve sentence; it may put them off from committing crimes in the first place if they knew they would be sent back to prison conditions far far worse than in the UK.
They certainly wouldn’t get TV, decent meals, comfortable beds and access to drugs.
Or is the real reason the ECHR which seems to be the fall back position for all foreigners wanting to stay in the UK.
All of a sudden they claim to be LGBTQI, or would in some way be persecuted or even killed for all sorts of spurious reasons if they were sent back to their own countries and the Judges in the UK seem to fall for it .
If we sent them back for trial and sentencing in their own country ,it would free up the backlog of cases in the UK Courts, and free up 1000’s of prison spaces.It’s a win win,so why don’t we do it??
June 27, 2025
Surely the easiest thing to do is not let them in the country in the first place.
June 27, 2025
it might catch on, but not with the Labour MPs.
June 27, 2025
From the BBC:
“Starmer climbs down on disability payment cuts after rebellion by Labour MPs”
“Reeves refuses to rule out tax rises after economy shrinks”
Money, money, money, who removed the money from the economy causing it to shrink?
If the economy was growing all the money needed to pay for Socialists dream would be flooding in. Instead, they(Labour) chose to starve the economy, expand the State and cause contraction. So, there is not enough money for anything.
There is no more tax to be had, all tax increases will hit well paid Labour supporters(The States work force). All increase will now increase the doom spiral. That leaves managing the State, cutting it size to what the State can afford. Stop the handouts and the funding of other peoples criminals. A ‘Hard’ thing to do now the rot has set in but is needed to find a way out
June 27, 2025
Off topic
The BBC are reporting that UK car production sank to its lowest level since 1949 ……thanks to net-zero and the governments that impose the policies to stop the seas rising
June 28, 2025
Rather a lot of soon to be imported cars sank recently, in the sea!
June 27, 2025
The government should give a gold-wrapped present, at Christmas, of Dickens’ Christmas Carol to every child in England (seriously)!
This book has had more formation on my religious / moral / spiritual life than what I’ve heard most priests preach in church. The book is genius. And teaches children (and adults) the value of real charity of spirit, of really forgiving and being forgiving, and also of hard work (Scrooge’s problem isn’t that he works hard but that he’s greedy – so the work ethic is there but been corrupted).
Also, Dickens has played a key role in my creative / imaginative life in general and helped to read and write much better.
And Dickens is also just really funny. With great salty personalities.
Dickens is a national treasure (nor is he perfect either. Barnaby Rudge is a bit boring. And Dickens can fall into sentimentality etc). And the country would be much better off, in every sense, if we promoted him more / keep promoting him.
June 27, 2025
We have to ask why we treat brutal foreign offenders with kid gloves?
Most of us are really tired of the soft liberal approach to how we manage the threat imposed by immigrants, especially those using violence.
There are plenty of uninhabited rocks and small islands in UK seas – If we can’t export criminals back to where they came from, perhaps life on a small rock would suit them better.
There again, the establishment is all so keen on dispatching the elderly through euthanasia – maybe we should use the same approach for unpardonable vicious crimes by those we can’t export.
June 27, 2025
We should deport, with the proviso that a) they will be imprisoned in their country of origin and b) they have a lifetime ban on returning to the UK.
June 27, 2025
That would be ok if our civil servants could keep a track of who comes in, but they can’t. There is no chance of ensuring banned criminals never came back here.
June 27, 2025
“Why do taxpayers have to pay more than £50,000 a year per prisoner, or over £500m a year to keep these people?”
For the same reason that taxpayers pay for mass immigration and even to encourage illegal immigration of unidentified young men of fighting age from the Third World with collection from French waters, free 4 star hotel accomodation (or even now a house), £40/week pocket money, free entertainment, travel passes, translation services and lawyers as well as the freedom to roam our streets and take black market jobs undercutting our own people. It is to impoverish the country and turn it into a Third World melting pot together with all its grievances, laws, customs and practices.
June 27, 2025
Why are we allowing so many unvetted foreign nations into our country, that end up in our jails ….its being reported by the BBC that Marcus Monzo was Spanish-Brazilian national
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c36xwdxlx1et
June 27, 2025
If a foreigner is sentenced to serve prison time, that should be enough to activate a return to their country. Either at the end of the sentence for the more minor offences. Or to serve the sentence in their own country for serious offences. Returning to Britain should be made impossible.
June 27, 2025
We must first totally leave the ECHR, IT is a corrupt load of ANTI Brit foreigners
June 27, 2025
We must first find a political party that is willing to leave the ECHRs, a willingness that is clearly stated as priority one in its manifesto
June 27, 2025
No need to leave the ECHR, just take their decisions under advice – then do what we think best.
June 27, 2025
Yes, we are most definitely being taken for mugs !
It is obvious that any government not led by Labour is going to take us out of the ECHR in 2028-9 (can Mr U-Turn-Starmer actually cling on until then?)
But the new government will also need to reign in our over-liberal judges by legislating very tight criterior on who can be allowed to stay.
I would say no refused asylum seekers or their families can stay. As for foreign criminals, none should be allowed to stay here, irrespective of family ties. If they broke our laws, they automatically disqualify their families permission to stay as well as their own.
Anyone from overseas allowed lo live in our Country should be immediately deported if they face a custodial sentence. They should have no right of appeal before deportation. They can then appeal from abroad, but only if they lodge the full legal costs themselves with the court.
June 27, 2025
Off Topic …..but a major facing saving by PM.
Labour’s original plan to reform the welfare system was a hasty effort to try to make billions of pounds of cuts to a rapidly growing bill in order to help the chancellor meet her self-imposed rules on government borrowing.
But this latest U-turn raises significant questions about just how stability and credibility-enhancing it really is to tweak financial plans every six months to hit budget targets that change frequently due to a variety of reasons, including things such as the cost of borrowing which the government cannot control.
The latest deal appears to row back more than half of the annual £5bn earmarked saving from the welfare reforms, by 2029-30. The planned cut to disability personal independent payment (Pip) eligibility was set to raise the bulk of this saving, £4.5bn.
But now the changes will apply only to new claimants from November 2026, sparing 370,000 current claimants out of the 800,000 identified by the DWP impact assessment. Another change announced in March, which now only applies to new claimants, involves how Pip applicants are assessed.
Pip assessments involve questions about tasks like preparing and eating food, washing and getting dressed. Each is scored from zero – for no difficulty – to 12 – for the most severe.
The Lady was not for turning, but Starmer makes a habit of spinning regularly.
June 27, 2025
Deporting Foreign criminals is common sense, as it would immediately free up 10,000 places in the prison system. As it is the sensible thing to do, this Labour Government will never do it. But our Governments have been talking about building more prisons for years, but it never seems to happen. Just like the total lack of vision and foresight when it comes to energy, water reservoirs, hospitals, training GPs and Nurses, farming and defence.
Immigration is the UK’s number one problem, too many people too fast, but our MPs and Governments bury their heads in the sand. So, around 13% of the prison population is immigrants, and the Government has no idea of the background of most immigrants coming into the UK. We are not a sovereign nation if we can’t secure our borders and choose who we let in.
June 27, 2025
Keir Starmer reminds me of Rishi Sunak
Reply Rishi is more diligent at reading briefs and understanding issues, bought his own clothes and was criticised for spending too little time abroad.
June 27, 2025
“It is very dear to build extra orisons to keep up with surging demand….Why do taxpayers have to pay more than £50,000 a year per prisoner….”
Certainly foreign criminals need to be deported, although we know this is not the view of our PM unfortunately. But whether foreign or not, keeping criminals in prison costs far less than letting them out to commit further crimes, often destroying their victims lives, causing damage to property, increasing the need for police and courts and most likely costing more than £50K/crime in lawyers’ (and translators’) fees.
June 27, 2025
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he regrets saying the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers” in a speech about immigration.
What nonsense!
Its been an island of strangers for decades.
When I travel on trains I hear several languages, very rarely any I can understand, especially English.
I accompany my better half sometimes in Reading shopping. It is difficult to believe we are in a ‘famous’ old English town. Visit M&S, very few white English customers, you’ll probably be served by a foreigner. Most shops are the same, perhaps I am out of touch and shopping gets done by internet and delivered to door?
We live between 2 schools, it seems clear by the parents walking children, but mostly driving and abandoning their car, that they were not born here. Whenever I need to use the ‘phone’ I find the responding voice, after several number choices pressed, barely understandable. How do people with very poor spoke English get the jobs?
Put me down as a complaining racist if you must, but at least our PM finally almost makes a good point.
June 27, 2025
Mickey, I thought it was just me because of my defective hearing — even with hearing aids.
June 28, 2025
Some years ago, I saw some footage of despairing foreign prisoners in our prisons, and felt real pity for them, especially as they could not communicate well in English. Amidst all the mismanagement and incompetence, I suspect there is terrible suffering in some of these hapless souls, and one hopes that the Probation Service is well-funded to minister corrective help where needed, which may involve early repatriation, where needed. Prison should not be to torture men’s souls, but to reform them, with a ray of hope of going straight in the future. I also felt that there were a good many who’d ended up incarcerated far too easily, due to ‘rough justice’. One would hope that justice in this (once) enlightened country always be balanced with genuine mercy, otherwise the whole exercise is an expensive waste.