Foreign criminals living in Britain at record high
THE number of foreign crimi- nals released from jail to walk Britain’s streets has reached a record high of almost 12,000.
There were 11,769 foreign national offenders out of prison but not deported at the end of September, Home Office figures show.
The ‘completely unacceptable’ total was up by more than 800 in a year. It means two foreign criminals a day, on average, were freed to live in the UK over the last 12 months.
The total has risen by 198 per cent since 2012. More than 3,700 foreign criminals have been living in Britain for more than five years after jail.
A further 3,320 have been on the streets for two to five years, up 640 year-on-year. There was a slump in inmates deported before the end of their jail term, data showed. Data showed 297 were deported from April to June this year, down from a peak of 591 in the same quarter in 2016.
David Spencer, of the Centre for Crime Prevention think-tank, said: ‘It is completely unacceptable that so many foreign criminals have been left free to live in the community.
‘This number continues to rise which is deeply troubling and shows that neither the Home Office or the MoJ [Ministry of Justice] has a grip on this problem.’
IT is 16 years since Labour home secretary Charles Clarke was sacked after the Home Office freed 1,000 foreign criminals into the community at the end of their sentences.
Today, the situation is worse. Much worse. There are 11,769 killers, sex attackers and other dangerous overseas offenders prowling our streets while awaiting deportation.
The question is, will ministers do anything about this scandal? And if not, will they pay the price? To be fair, they are partly hamstrung by – you guessed it – Labour’s pernicious Human Rights Act, as well as the flawed Modern Slavery Act.
It’s bad enough that undesirables cannot be detained without a realistic prospect of imminent removal (and, so shambolic is our immigration system, there rarely is).
They invariably use activist lawyers, paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer, to avoid being kicked out – often dubiously claiming it would infringe their rights.
Never mind their victims’ rights. It is ever more apparent that Britain is the world’s dumping ground for foreign criminals.
To make the fiasco worse, the Home Office seems unable to stop the Channel migrants, remove failed asylum seekers in significant numbers or reduce sky-high immigration.
The Mail has lost count of the promises ministers have made to fix this mess. But there has inevitably been a chasm between their rhetoric and the reality. It will not be an easy task, but Home Secretary Suella Braverman must roll up her sleeves and try to succeed where others have stumbled.
It is also 16 years since the fundamental problem she faces was identified. Back then John Reid, one of her Labour predecessors, infamously said the Home Office was ‘not fit for purpose’. Dispiritingly, in all the time that’s passed, nothing has changed.