Reform’s overseas prisons plan ‘simply not credible’, says prison charity

A charity working to improve conditions in prisons has dismissed Reform UK’s plan to send foreign prisoners abroad as “simply not credible”.

Yesterday, Reform announced that it would deport foreign prisoners to their home countries, or to jails in El Salvador or Kosovo.

Farage also mentioned Lithuania and Estonia as potential options for where the UK could send some of the 10,000 foreign nationals in British prisons. 

However, just hours after Farage suggested working with Estonia, an Estonian government spokesperson ruled out a prison rental deal.

As reported by the Metro’s Luke Alsford, the spokesperson said it was not “considering any additional prison rental cooperation agreements with other governments”.

Reform has said their policy would put an end to early release schemes Labour has been using to ease severe prison overcrowding. 

Farage claimed, without providing figures, that the cost of the party’s plan to rent prison places abroad for foreign nationals would be “half per prisoner”.  

He added that the plan “is going to save us over the next decade several billion pounds”.

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said Belgium and Norway trialed sending prisoners to the Netherlands, but that it proved “difficult” and “costly”.

Sinha told Left Foot Forward: “The suggestion that all foreign national prisoners could simply be removed from our prisons risks presenting a complex challenge as a quick fix.

“While the government should make use of deportation and prisoner transfer arrangements where lawful and appropriate, proposals to send people overseas on a large scale raise significant practical, legal and ethical questions.

“Countries including Belgium and Norway have already tested versions of this approach, demonstrating just how difficult, costly and limited such arrangements can be.”

She added: “With warnings that prison capacity could again be exhausted as soon as this autumn, the idea that overseas prison deals could provide a meaningful solution is simply not credible. The government needs measures that can deliver real reductions in the prison population now, not proposals that risk generating more headlines than prison places.”

Amnesty International has separately spoken out about the human rights implications of sending prisoners to El Salvador.

The human rights group described the proposal as “financial brutality with British taxpayers’ money” and said it is an example of politicians choosing to put “hate, violence and inhumanity” ahead of leadership.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward