Prisons in the United Kingdom are getting really
crowded so they are set to send
non-British prisoners back to their respective countries, with more than 200
prisoners set to be sent back to Nigeria. Punch reports that talks are continuing into
reaching a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement, which could see more than
half of the 534 criminals from Nigeria currently in UK jails repatriated.
UK Prisons Minister, Jeremy Wright, told MailOnline how ‘more foreign prisoners must serve
their sentences in their own countries.’ Ministers have been ordered to step up
efforts to end the scandal of more than one in eight prisoners being from
overseas.
British Prime Minister, David Cameron vowed to end the
practice of the British taxpayer picking up the bill for criminals with no
business in the UK. The Prime Minister said in 2010 that he would ‘personally
intervene’ to send more foreign criminals home.
Britain has even made clear it would pay to build new
prisons in countries like Nigeria to speed up the process of sending foreign
criminals home. Up to £1m has been promised to upgrade Nigerian jails,
including a new wing at Kirikiri Prison in Lagos.
But to date little progress has been made. When the
coalition was formed there were 11,135 foreign prisoners in UK jails, and this
figure has fallen by just three per cent since to 10,786.
Each felon costs an average of around £40,000 a year
to keep inside.
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