Cameron plan to drive out foreign thugs? A cosy chat

DAVID CAMERON is sending a crack team of experts into one of Britain’s toughest jails – to politely persuade foreign criminals to leave the country.

The Behavioural Insights Team visited Pentonville prison this summer to convince inmates to go along with deportation rather than launch costly appeals.

The unit uses psychological techniques known as ‘nudge theory’ to help people make better choices for themselves rather than forcing them to behave in a certain way.

The unlikely tactic at Pentonville is at an early stage, but it is thought members of the nudge unit spoke to foreign criminals about their attitudes to returning home, in an attempt to work out the best way to get them to comply.

Immigration officers are also stationed at the Victorian jail in North London – where criminals are often sent straight from courts in the capital after conviction – to find out where foreign inmates are from so they can be returned home as soon as possible.

Mark Sedwill, the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary, told MPs in a letter seen by The Mail on Sunday: ‘The Home Office is working with the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team to look at how we can better drive compliance among foreign national offenders in prisons and encourage early co-operation with the deportation process.’

The move was revealed as Mr Sedwill sought to counter the conclusion of the Public Accounts Committee that there has been a ‘complete failure’ of attempts to kick out foreign criminals.

He also disclosed that the Government is trying to stop them arriving in the first place – despite European Union rules on free movement – by sharing more information on criminal records.

Operation Signal involves putting burglars and pickpockets on the Warnings Index given to border guards so that ‘if they travel outside the UK and seek to return, they can be considered for refusal of entry on public policy grounds’.

Police are also performing far more overseas criminal-record checks on suspects – 94,775 last year, up from just 6,153 five years earlier – so people cannot hide their past wrongdoing.

Mr Sedwill’s letter to MPs said 5,277 foreign criminals were kicked out of Britain in 2014-15, a three per cent rise on the previous year. Many were sent home under a ‘deport first, appeal later’ scheme to reduce costs on the legal system.

As this newspaper revealed earlier this year, 5,000 foreign offenders are at large on the streets of Britain after serving their time behind bars.