One in 50 Albanians in the UK in prison, Telegraph analysis shows
One in 50 Albanians in the UK is in jail, according to analysis revealing the first league table of criminality by nationality.
More than 1,200 Albanians have been sent to prison from a migrant population of nearly 53,000 Albanians living in the UK who do not have UK citizenship, according to a Telegraph analysis of official data.
The analysis suggests that the overall imprisonment rate of foreign nationals is 27 per cent higher than for British citizens. It shows 18.2 inmates per 10,000 migrants compared with the UK’s 14 per 10,000. German, Italian, Indian, Greek, US, Sri Lankan, French and Chinese nationals are the least likely to be jailed.
It is the first time such an analysis has been carried out amid claims that there has been an “institutional cover-up” over the publication of migrant crime rates.
While data on nationalities among the prison population reveals the scale of serious crimes committed by non-UK nationals, information about offences committed by migrants for which they are not jailed is not published.
A backbench amendment to Rishi Sunak’s Sentencing Bill would have required the Government each year to present a report to Parliament detailing the nationality, visa and asylum status of every offender convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous 12 months. The Bill was ditched due to the election.
Mr O’Brien said it was a “fascinating” analysis by The Telegraph which revealed “enormous variations” between nationalities.
“It is shameful that the Government refuses to publish so much of the information which it holds about this subject. It should be available to the public so we can have an informed debate,” he said.
“The Home Office knows the immigration status of prisoners and whether they were here legally or illegally, but it does not publish this. It knows about the offending history of overseas nationals in our prisons and whether they are committing multiple offences but it does not publish this.
Mr Jenrick said: “This analysis confirms what the public will have sensed for a long time: some nationalities are more likely to go on to commit serious crimes than others. It once again points to the need for a far more tightly controlled immigration system, including more rigorous security checks for nationalities linked to criminality in the UK.”
The Telegraph compiled the league table by taking data from the Ministry of Justice which shows there are 10,435 foreign nationals in jails in England and Wales compared with 76,866 British nationals. Nations with fewer than 20 people in UK jails were excluded because of the low sample size.
The Albanian imprisonment rate was 232.33 per 10,000 people – or one in 50. This was calculated based on the census data showing 68,672 foreign-born Albanians lived in the UK. Excluding the 15,860 without a UK passport leaves some 52,000. With 1,227 in jail, it equates to two per cent of Albanians.
The analysis is likely to have underestimated the size of the Albanian population as it does not take into account illegal migrants including more than 12,000 who reached the UK in small boats across the Channel in 2022. Some estimates have put it as high as 140,000, which would make it just under one in 100 in jail.
The Albanians are followed by Kosovans with an imprisonment rate of 150.23 per 10,000, Vietnamese (148.88), Algerians (124.41), Jamaicans (110.77), Eritreans (110.7), Iraqis (104.43) and Somalis (100.37). All have more than one in 100 of their respective populations in jail.
They are at least 25 times more likely to be in jail than foreign nationals with the lowest rates of imprisonment and at least seven times the rate of British citizens at 14.27 per 100,000 of the population.
Germany had the fewest, at 4.68 per 10,000 (one in 2,000), followed by Italy (4.96), India (6.24), Greece (6.36), US (7.27), Sri Lanka (8.17), France (8.64) and China (9.39).
Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/04/one-in-50-albanians-uk-in-prison-telegraph-analysis/
