Foreign shoplifters, thieves and drug dealers are to be deported rather than prosecuted as part of radical plans by the Justice Secretary to free up prison spaces.
Alex Chalk told The Telegraph that lower level foreign offenders will be spared jail and instead given “conditional cautions” under which they will be expelled and banned from returning to Britain.
Chris Philp, the policing minister, has been put in charge of delivering the deportation scheme which aims to reduce the 3,300 foreign prisoners on remand who have been charged but not yet convicted.
Why not just deport those convicted?
Oh, that’s right, because middle class women without enough children then stop the planes taking off, right?
I understand there’s a sub-clause that if the offender shouts “Allahu akbar” at the officer attending, the officer will take the knee while the offender strolls off to his suite at the Dorchester paid by the mayor’s office….
This initiative, provided by the mayor’s office, is designed to save police time and the costs to London taxpayers…
3,300 out of the millions of undesirables? Amazing how gaining an actual conviction makes you a citizen with rights.
I read elsewhere that the legal aid funding for Ms Begum already exceeds £250k and when her inevitable appeal reaches the Supreme Court the costs to the Uk taxpayer will amount to several million.
Now just imagine tens of thousands of petty and not so petty convicted criminals allegedly fearing for their safety should they be returned to the non-war zones of their birth.
Given that it apparently costs the taxpayer about £50k a year to keep them in prison, this sounds a good idea. Whether it will ever happen is another matter.
I will wager a bottle of good bourbon that if we all come back here one year from now, we will find that not one single person will have been forcibly deported from the UK under these provisions. Not one. Any takers?
Like so many policies put forth by UK governments (doesn’t matter which party), this policy has many goals, but the one goal it does not have is that of ‘being implemented’. If it does anything at all, it will be to quickly become a ‘free ticket home’ programme for illegals, who will learn that all they have to do to go home for free is a little shoplifting.
llater,
llamas
When I was living in Hong Kong if I’d broken the law I’d have been deported. Why not the same here?
Can’t say I like the sound of this at all. thieves and drug dealers are to be deported rather than prosecuted So there’s no trial or testing of evidence. The police “sez you dun it” so off out you go. You trust your police that much? The CPS?
I’m thinking of what happened to me here. I was arrested on an assault charge. It was actually me who was assaulted but the other party made an accusation I assaulted them. I know what the actual coppers doing the arresting thought. They were entirely friendly. No handcuffs which is usually obligatory here in any arrest. Chatty conversation down the nick. Although I did get banged up* for a couple of days awaiting court to open on Monday. Again, here that’s obligatory. The other party was as well, since I’d accused them. Released by the court on Monday & a trial of both of us was set for the following year. (Remember this is Continental law, not British. Trials are investigatory not adversarial.) Trial was open & shut. Neither side offered evidence. Other side had been advised by lawyers that pursuing this would probably see them doing a stretch due to previous where I had the recorded telephone calls requesting police assistance timed before the assault. So how would that have worked out under what’s proposed. It’s not the coppers who arrested me at the scene making the decision. The phone recordings my brief had to prise out a reluctant bureaucracy. It’s a desk jockey in an office somewhere thinking “Another drunken Brit, let’s get shot of him. Deportation.” And Spain would not have been blessed with my continuing presence. Although FK where they’d deport me. France?
*On my fucking birthday as well!
Wild stab in the dark (and not from imported diversity)…
You’re white?
if we all come back here one year from now, we will find that not one single person will have been forcibly deported from the UK under these provisions
Agreed. Not that it matters. What’s the point of deporting people when we can’t/refuse to enforce our borders? There’s plenty of crims who’ve been deported multiple times.
Just another fucking Tory lie.
I think you lot are looking at this from from the wrong direction. Yeah, of course they won´’t implement for the enrichment. But it’s also giving them the ability to chuck anyone out the country they don’t like. They’d love that.
@bloke in spain
To add to your points, the article says “…scheme which aims to reduce the 3,300 foreign prisoners on remand who have been charged but not yet convicted.
They represent nearly a third of the 10,441 foreign offenders in jails in England and Wales”
showing the underlying prejudice and bigotry that is driving this initiative. People on remand are not “foreign offenders” because we have this principle of innocent until proven guilty (with rare exceptions where someone is on remand after being convicted of a previous offence).
If we are running out of prison places, how about we stop making so many things illegal?
@Charles
Yes! We need to stop prosecuting things like murder, rape and robbery. We end up locking up all the wrong type of people.
This makes me think I should reactivate my Danish heritage and start sacking middle England from a longboat.
@Mohave Greenie – “things like murder, rape and robbery”
I think you’ll find that those have been illegal for a very long time, so cannot be included in the “making so many things illegal” category. We keep adding more and more offences, so it’s hardly surprising that the prison population expands.