Prisoners: Foreign Nationals

Justice written question – answered at on 26 March 2014.

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Photo of Keith Vaz Keith Vaz Chair, Home Affairs Committee, Chair, Home Affairs Committee

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many foreign national prisoners of each (a) ethnicity, (b) country of origin and (c) gender are held in the UK.

Photo of Jeremy Wright Jeremy Wright The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice

The information requested is as follows:

Table 1 provides information on the ethnicity of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) held in custody:

Table 1: Foreign national prison population by ethnicity, 31 December 2013, England and Wales
  All
White 4,326
Mixed 367
Asian or Asian British 1,997
Black or Black British 3,005
Chinese or Other ethnic group 725
Not stated 25
Unrecorded 250
All 10,695

Table 2 provides information on gender of FNOs held in custody:

Table 2: Foreign national prison population by gender, 31 December 2013, England and Wales
  All
Male 10,130
Female 565
All 10,695

We do not hold data on the country of origin of FNOs held in custody. However we do publish data in relation to self-declared nationality, which can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/276084/prison-population-tables-q3-2013.xls

(table 1.6)

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

All FNOs sentenced to custody are referred to the Home Office for them to consider deportation at the earliest possible opportunity.

The number of FNOs deported under the Early Removal Scheme (ERS) has increased under this Government. In 2013, we removed nearly 2,000 FNOs under ERS and under the Tariff Expired Removal Scheme (TERS), which we introduced in May 2012, we have removed 235 FNOs to date.

Whereas this Government have begun to reduce the foreign national population in prison since 2010, between 1997 and 2010, the number of foreign nationals in our prisons more than doubled.

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