The cost of keeping foreign prisoners in England and Wales is costing the taxpayer £600million annually, according to new data.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance has crunched the prison nationality data released this morning and found that 11,153 foreign nationals are currently detained across the prison system, representing more than one in eight of all prisoners.
The top 10 foreign nationals held in UK prisons
The pressure group has compiled a list of the top 10 foreign nationals held behind bars by population and average cost to the taxpayer.
At an annual cost of £54,000 per inmate and with the total number held at 1,193, Albanian nationals constitute the most expensive and prevalent group, with their incarceration potentially costing taxpayers over £64million.
Albanians are followed by:
Polish
Population size - 759
Cost to taxpayers - £40,834,959
Romanian
Population size - 716
Cost to taxpayers - £38,521,516
Irish
Population size - 707
Cost to taxpayers - £38,037,307
Lithuanian
Population size - 339
Cost to taxpayers - £18,238,539
Jamaican
Population size - 338
Cost to taxpayers - £18,184,738
Indian
Population size - 320
Cost to taxpayers - £17,216,320
Pakistani
Population size - 317
Cost to taxpayers - £17,054,917
Portuguese
Population size - 297
Cost to taxpayers - £15,978,897
Iraqi
Population size - 287
Cost to taxpayers - £15,440,887
Keeping foreign prisoners in England and Wales is costing the taxpayer £600 million annually, according to new data
|GB NEWS
The TaxPayers’ Alliance also found:
Total prison population as of June 30 2025 - 87,334
Non-British prison population (%) - 12.77 per cent
Annual cost per prisoner 2023-24 - 53,801
The £600million expense surpasses projected revenues from inheritance tax changes affecting family farms and businesses, which the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates will generate approximately £500million.
Foreign offenders account for 13 per cent of the total prison population in England and Wales.
New reforms to deportation and removal rules will make it easier to remove foreign criminals committing crimes in the UK, the Home Office announced in May this year.
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Foreign offenders account for 13 per cent of the total prison population in England and Wales
| PAThe Opposition has urged Labour Ministers to implement immediate deportations for nearly all foreign offenders, excluding only those whose detention in Britain is essential for national security purposes, in a bid to tackle the rising costs to public finances.
Just days ago, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage proposed sending some prisoners overseas to serve their sentences, as part of a raft of measures he says would create around 30,000 prison places and cost £17.4billion.