One in eight prisoners in Britain is a foreign national

Philip Johnston:

Serious criminal behaviour by foreign nationals should be met with zero tolerance, a report says today. It calls for a presumption that deportation will be recommended for any offence that brings a 12-month jail sentence.

One in eight prisoners - about 10,000 - is a foreign national and the increase in overseas inmates has taken up 3,500 more spaces in the past five years than had been expected.

Every year the courts recommend deportation in only about 600 cases but no statistics are kept to show whether these are actually carried out.

The study by the UK think-tank Migrationwatch suggests that the arrangements are haphazard and that the guidelines to the courts, unrevised for 25 years despite the big rise in foreign inmates, are unclear.

The Home Office says that any foreign national sent to prison, with the exception of certain Commonwealth and Irish nationals, is liable to deportation.

The Home Secretary can make such an order after a recommendation by a court or on his own initiative on the grounds that the offender's presence is not conducive to the public good. But no one knows how many are removed.

A few years ago the Government introduced a scheme under which foreign national prisoners serving sentences of more than three months were to leave jail up to four and a half months early, bringing them into line with the home detention curfew for domestic prisoners.

Paul Goggins, the Home Office minister, said at the time: "There are many foreign nationals in prisons, some of whom will be suitable to deport before the end of their sentence.

On removal from prison they will be deported immediately to their country of origin. This will have a positive impact on the prison population as well as making a saving to the taxpayer."

The Home Office said that 1,500 prisoners had been removed under the scheme in the past year, although its parliamentary answers admit that deportation figures are not kept.

Migrationwatch says the system is unfair to those who are deported because proceedings usually begin only towards the end of the sentence.

As there are opportunities for appeal, the inmate can be kept in custody long after the term handed down while legal arguments continue.

The report calls for central records to be kept, including biometric information that should be available to posts that issue visas overseas to prevent offenders applying under a false identity.

The Sentencing Advisory Council is drawing up guidelines to the courts on how and when deportation should be recommended.

In a consultation paper last year it also criticised the lack of official figures. The last statistics it could find dated from 1996, when 360 court recommendations were made and 270 carried out.

Migrationwatch says: "At present, it is not possible to make deportation part of the sentence. The law should be changed to permit this to reduce the amount of time spent by foreign prisoners in Britain's heavily overcrowded jails."

"There should also be a presumption that deportation should be recommended for certain offences, including drugs, people smuggling, forgery of travel documents, serious offences of violence and sexual offences."

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