Number of foreign offenders still living freely in Britain despite being earmarked for deportation surges nearly 10 per cent to record high since Labour came to power – with early release scheme set to fuel crisis, experts warn
The number of foreign offenders in Britain who have been marked for deportation but remain living freely in the community has risen to a record high, up nearly 10 per cent since Labour took power. Experts have warned that the government's early release scheme for prisoners is likely to worsen the problem, adding further pressure to an immigration and criminal justice system already under scrutiny over its ability to remove foreign nationals convicted of crimes.
The rise means more offenders who should, in principle, be removed from the UK are instead remaining at large while deportation processes stall, fuelling concerns about public safety and the effectiveness of enforcement. Critics point to the early release scheme, introduced to ease prison overcrowding, as a factor likely to compound the backlog by releasing more foreign offenders into the community before their deportation cases are resolved.
- Foreign offenders earmarked for deportation but at large hits record high
- Numbers up nearly 10% since Labour came to power
- Experts warn early prisoner release scheme will worsen the crisis
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Those raising the alarm argue that public protection must come first: individuals who have committed crimes and lost the right to remain should be removed promptly, not left living in communities indefinitely. They contend that a rising backlog reflects institutional failure – under-resourced immigration enforcement, slow appeals processes and now an early release scheme that adds further offenders to the queue without addressing removal capacity – and that successive governments have a duty to close this gap quickly to maintain public confidence in the justice and immigration systems.
The case against
Others argue the picture is more complicated than the headline figures suggest, since deportation cannot simply be accelerated at will: the UK is bound by legal safeguards, including human rights and asylum appeal rights, that exist precisely to prevent wrongful removals and must be worked through properly rather than bypassed for speed. They point out that many offenders in this cohort are managed under strict licence conditions or monitoring rather than being unsupervised, and that the early release scheme itself is a necessary response to genuine prison overcrowding, meaning the answer lies in investing in casework capacity and international return agreements rather than treating due process as the obstacle.