Foreign National Prisoners in England & Wales

As of 30 June this year, there were 11,135 foreign national prisoners in England and Wales out of a grand total of 85,002. 3,342 were EU nationals, 774 were women. 6,434 were serving sentences longer than six months. 581 were being held under immigration powers after completion of their sentences. Wandsworth Prison in south London had the most number of foreign national prisoners at 497. Those of you with a sharp memory will remember that I visited Wandsworth Prison nearly two years ago and I made a post about my experience.

The foreign national prisoners belonged to 165 countries and this is how they brokedown:

01. Jamaica    - 942 
02. Nigeria    - 727
03. Ireland    - 681
04. Poland     - 642
05. Vietnam    - 596
06. Pakistan   - 440
07. Somalia    - 433
08. Romania    - 380
09. China      - 364
10. Lithuania  - 361
11. India      - 329
12. Iraq       - 234
13. Bangladesh - 216
14. Portugal   - 209
15. Iran       - 197
16. Zimbabwe   - 189
17. Algeria    - 175
18. Turkey     - 167
19. Albania    - 154
20. Latvia     - 150

Most of the usual suspects, though I was surprised at how high Irish nationals were in the table. It would be interesting to compare the data with different time periods, against the percentage of foreign nationals resident in the UK and with similar data from other western countries.

[Source: Hansard, 26 October 2010]