Deon P Green, Gleaner Writer
LONDON, England:
It is costing British taxpayers nearly £49 million (J$6.5 billion) annually to keep Jamaican prisoners behind bars and approximately £400 million (J$53 billion) annually to maintain foreign nationals in its overcrowded prisons.
The Jamaican contingent accounts for the largest group of foreign nationals in Britain, a report has stated.
The figures released by the Home Office note that the country's prison population stands at approximately 80,000 inmates. Of that number there are 12,122 foreign prisoners compared to around 10,000 a year ago. The foreign nationals are from 164 different countries. The largest foreign groups are Jamaicans (1,490) and Nigerians (1,070).
The figures also reveal that the annual cost per prisoner was approximately £32,888 (J$4.4 million) in 2005-06 reflecting an overall annual cost of just over £398 million to maintain the foreign inmates.
The Gleaner also learned that, over the past five years, the number of British prisoners increased by approximately 10 per cent, against an 80 per cent increase in foreigners, forcing the authorities to provide 4,000 additional spaces.
Proposal hit snag
The suggestion to send many more foreign offenders home, particularly the Jamaicans, hit a snag as there would be need for assurances that those sent home would serve their entire sentences as required by a British court Britain lacks a repatriation agreement with some Caribbean countries, including Jamaica.
Reacting to the report, Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman who obtained the figures, said the removal of the Jamaican prisoners alone would save £49 million a year.
While there have been suggestions to have a number of the foreign prisoners serve their sentences in their home countries, as well as calls for fewer and shorter prison sentences to be handed down, critics say that if there were not so many foreign inmates, there would not be a crisis.
The majority of foreigners languishing in the British prisons are serving sentences for drug-related offences.
