PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Prisoners: Foreign Nationals (18 March 2015)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national prisoners there are in England and Wales by (a) country and (b) security category of each prison.

Asked by:
Alison McGovern (Labour)

Foreign national offenders who have no right to remain in the UK should be removed at the earliest opportunity and the Government has toughened the system, including by pursuing compulsory transfer agreements with European countries.

In addition, 23,000 foreign offenders have been removed from the UK since 2010 and more than 600 under the 'deport first, appeal later' provisions, with many more being processed through the system. The grounds on which criminals can appeal against deportation have been cut.

Data on the number of foreign national prisoners in prisons in England and Wales is published in the Ministry of Justice’s quarterly population tables, which can be accessed via the following web link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2014

Table 1.8 of the document entitled Prison population: 31 December 2013 to 31 December 2014 gives a breakdown of the England and Wales population as of 31 December 2014 by country of nationality.

The table below provides a breakdown of the foreign national prisoner population by the category and/or type of prison in which they are held. It should be noted however, that not all prisoners will be of the same security category as the establishment in which they are held. Prisoners with a lower security categorisation may be held in a prison with a higher security designation.

Foreign National prison population as at 31 December 2014 by prison category, England and Wales
Prison Category(1)	Foreign National population as at 31 Dec 14
Local	3,813
High Security	815
Category B Trainer	778
Category C Trainer	2,882
Open	80
Female open	6
Female closed	499
YJB/YOI	333
IRC	1,297
Total	10,503
(1) Prisons have been categorised by their predominant function but may have secondary functions. For example, the YJB/YOI category may include some young adults.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing

Answered by:
Andrew Selous (Conservative)
23 March 2015