Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2015-01-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in what circumstances a foreign criminal serving a prison sentence for an offence committed outside the UK could serve their sentence in the UK.

Andrew Selous

International prisoner transfer arrangements may enable non-nationals to apply to transfer to their state of normal residence or to the state to which they have close ties. There is no requirement on a state to accept the transfer of a non-national resident. Since 2010, no such transfers have taken place to England and Wales. Prisoner transfer is a devolved matter and is the responsibility of the relevant Minister in Scotland and in Northern Ireland.

The numbers of foreign national prisoners from each country convicted of each offence in the violence offence group from April 2013 to March 2014 are in the attached table 1.

The numbers of foreign national prisoners from each country, convicted of each offence type from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2014 are at the attached table 2. Prison receptions data for April to June 2014 is not available by offence group due to problems with data quality. Figures for this period will be published in due course subject to the result of ongoing investigations. Prison receptions data for July to September 2014 is currently not available and is due to be published on 29 January 2015.

The number of foreign national offenders in our prisons has reduced since 2010, compared to that number doubling between 1997 – 2010.