Jeremy Corbyn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jeremy Corbyn on 2014-06-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Romanian-born prisoners are being held in British prisons.

Jeremy Wright

On 31 March 2014 there were 588 prisoners in England and Wales who declared they were Romanian on reception to prison.

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

Romania has implemented the EU Prisoner Transfer Arrangement and relevant cases have been referred to the Home Office to obtain deportation orders.

The Prisoner Transfer process is just one mechanism for removing Foreign National Offenders. 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 over 240 FNOs to date.

Whereas this Government has 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.