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Britain: Nationalities of foreign criminals to be published for first time
The nationalities of foreign-born criminals living in the UK are to be published for the first time under Home Office plans.
The data will show the nationalities and crimes of those living in Britain and awaiting deportation – information which has never been made public before. The BBC reports that the data will be published by the end of the year.
The news has been welcomed by shadow justice secretary, Conservative Robert Jenrick who said: “We will finally see the hard reality that mass migration is fuelling crime across our country. Frankly, the public deserved to know this long ago.”
A number of British media platforms, including the BBC, reported on the soon-to-be unveiled plans, directed by Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. The BBC reports that the Home Office figures are expected to show the main three nationalities for foreign criminals living in the UK are Albanians, Romanians and Poles.
The most common offences are reported to be drugs-related, theft and robbery, and acts of violent assault. The information will be revealed in official league tables under the plans announced on Tuesday, The Telegraph reported.
Last month, it was revealed that foreign prisoners are costing the British taxpayer more than £1.3 million a day. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data revealed there are some 10,500 foreign prisoners held in jails across England and Wales at a cost of more than £50,000 a year.
Foreign-born inmates accounted for 12 per cent of all prisoners, according to the official data – Albanians top the nationality league table with more than 1,200 inmates. One in 50 Albanians in the UK are in prison, The Telegraph reported. They are followed by Poles (911), Romanians (729), Irish (634) and Jamaicans (370). While half have been sentenced, the remainder are held on remand as they are regarded as too dangerous to be released, or present a flight risk.
There are more than 19,000 foreign offenders awaiting deportation in Britain, figures from the end of 2024 show – up from nearly 18,000 before Labour took office. Foreign nationals sentenced to 12 months or more in prison are subject to automatic deportation in the UK, while the home secretary also has the power to deport those who receive a shorter sentence if she decides that their presence on British soil is not conducive to the public good. A source in the Home Office told the national broadcaster that the Government wanted the public to be better informed about foreign criminals, including where they come from.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that the decision shows Labour has “buckled” after being pressured from the Conservatives to disclose the figures. However, the Government has insisted that the development has only been made possible as Cooper ordered Home Office statisticians to overhaul their systems.
The increase in foreign criminals awaiting deportation has been blamed on early releases due to prison overcrowding, as well as a flurry of appeals against deportation orders on human rights grounds.
A Home Office source told the BBC: “Not only are we deporting foreign criminals at a rate never seen when Chris Philp and Robert Jenrick were in charge at the Home Office, but we will also be publishing far more information about that cohort of offenders than the Tories ever did.”
“We want to ensure the public is kept better informed about the number of foreign criminals awaiting deportation, where they are from and the crimes they have committed.”
Up until now, such breakdowns have been unofficial, published by newspapers and campaign groups who obtained data through Freedom of Information requests to police forces.
Last month, one breakdown by The Daily Telegraph revealed that foreigners had been convicted of up to a quarter of sex crimes in the UK. The damning data came from the Ministry of Justice and was obtained under freedom of information laws, becoming the first data analysis of its kind. Census data shows that foreign nationals make up just 9.3 per cent of the UK’s population.
According to the analysis, 15 per cent of sexual offences, including rape, were accounted for by foreign nationals between 2021 and 2023 – while a further eight per cent of convictions were recorded as unknown nationalities.
The paper reported that those labelled “unknown” were likely to largely include non-British nationals, taking the total number likely to have been committed by foreigners up to 23 per cent. The Telegraph reported that two nationalities – Afghans and Eritreans – “were more than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens, according to the data,” and that overall, foreign nationals were 71 per cent more likely than Britons to be responsible for sex crime convictions.
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