Nearly one in every eight prisoners is a foreign nationals, new figures reveal.
In a week when a migrant was arrested for the murder of a dog-walker who tried to help a man he was attacking and another was convicted of the cold-blooded killing of an innocent bank customer, it has emerged that such violent offences are not isolated incidents.
The latest Ministry of Justice statistics show that the number of foreign nationals in Britain’s jails has grown by more than three per cent in a year to 10,737.
The number of British prisoners, meanwhile, barely increased, going up just 0.2 per cent to 76,333 at the end of September.
At the same point in 2017, before dinghies started crossing the Channel in large numbers, there were 9,946 foreign nationals in British prisons.
The largest single foreign nationality group in the country’s jails is Albanian, with 1,068 individuals constituting ten per cent of the overseas contingent, followed by 776 Poles (seven per cent), 675 Romanians and 677 Irish (both six per cent) and 364 Indians (three per cent).
The number of Afghans behind bars shot up in a year by more than 30 per cent to 247, and the Syrian contingent by 43.2 per cent to 116.
Of the 10,737 foreigners in jail, 6,691 had already been sentenced, 3,719 were on remand awaiting the conclusion of their cases, and 327 were described as ‘non-criminal’.
The latest Ministry of Justice statistics show that the number of foreign nationals in Britain’s jails has grown by more than three per cent in a year to 10,737. Pictured: Asylum seeker Deng Chol Majek, 27, from Sudan, who killed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, in Walsall in October last year, three months after he arrived in the UK
The number of British prisoners, meanwhile, barely increased, going up just 0.2 per cent to 76,333 at the end of September. Pictured: Ethiopian Hadush Kebatu, 38, who assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Essex. He was wrongly freed from prison but has now been deported
Moroccan Ahmed Alid (left), 46, killed a Hartlepool man, 70, in a terror attack in October 2023 and was jailed for life – while Iranian Shahin Darvish-Narenjbon (right), 37, killed a North Yorkshire pensioner, 87, in January 2022 and was detained indefinitely in a psychiatric hospital
Eritrean Filmon Teklay (left), 36, assaulted a woman in Leeds in 2018 and was jailed – but is now free. Sudanese Karar Ali Karar (right), 29, killed a Leeds woman, 21, in 2019 and took his own life in jail
Syrians Omar and Mohammed Badreddin, 27 and 24, were jailed for repeatedly raping a girl, 13, from Newcastle between August 2018 and April 2019
Iraqi IS fanatic Ahmed Hassan (left), 26, bombed a London Tube in 2017 and was jailed for at least 34 years. In 2022, Sudanese Mahmood Noor-Ibrahim (right), 39, assaulted a girl, 16, from Hull and was jailed
Kurd Brwa Shorsh (left), 25, pushed a postman in front of a Tube last year and was jailed for life. Zimbabwean Obert Moyo (right), 47, overstayed his visa and was jailed for life for killing his ex in Salford in 2023
Solomon Islander Moffat Konofilia (pictured), 48, assaulted a girl, 17, in Dorset in December 2023 and was given a community order
There were a total of 1,731 foreign sex offenders recorded, an increase of almost 10 per cent.
There was a disproportionate number of foreign nationals in jail for drug offences, with 20 per cent of all drug offenders from overseas.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The number of foreign nationals in prison has increased under Labour.
‘Instead of letting out prisoners early, they should leave the European Convention on Human Rights and deport every single foreign criminal clogging up our jails.
‘If countries won’t take back their nationals, we should suspend visas and aid until they do. The Government needs to get serious.’
The MoJ said: ‘This Government is deporting foreign-national offenders at pace – more than 5,000 last year, a 14 per cent increase on the previous year.
‘We have gone further by changing the law so foreign prisoners can be deported earlier.’
While foreign nationals make up 12 per cent of the prison population, 16 per cent of the overall UK population was born abroad, according to the last census.
