London: Agencies
The Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom decided to evacuate crowded prisons by deporting foreign convicts and phasing out short sentences in favor of community punishments after the rise in crime rates in the Kingdom during the recent period.
According to an analysis by The Guardian newspaper, more than two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales are full, prompting courts to postpone decisions on bail for a number of convicted criminals, including those who pose a danger to society.
According to the Ministry of Justice, more than one in nine prisoners – 10,500 out of 88,225 – are foreign criminals, costing taxpayers around £500 million a year.
Any foreign prisoner sentenced to more than 12 months in prison can be deported for up to a year before the end of his or her sentence. Under the new plans expected to be announced by Justice Minister and Chancellor Alex Chalk, this will be brought forward by six months. According to what was reported by the Youm7 website in Cairo
Andrew Nelson, head of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the idea of increasing deportations was not new: “Successive governments have announced plans to reduce the prison population of foreign nationals, yet they remain a significant proportion of the prison population.”
The department will also announce plans to impose strict conditions on foreign criminals to prevent them from returning to the UK.
“Looking again at low-level criminals... and moving away from short-term prison sentences that make hardened criminals rather than rehabilitated criminals,” Councilor Alex Chalk wrote in an article for the Sunday Telegraph.
He continued: “A short period of a few months inside is not enough time to rehabilitate criminals, but it is more than enough to separate them from the family, work and domestic relationships that keep them from crime. All too often, offenders routinely return to crime as soon as they leave the prison gates.”