Just when you think you've heard it all...

[Hibsean]

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


Ananova:

Foreign inmates get more cash to go

A financial package offered to foreign national prisoners to encourage them to return home has been almost doubled to £1,500 in the weeks before the deadline to meet a Government target on removals.

The improved package is being offered for the next five and a half weeks as the Government tries to meet a target to remove 4,000 foreign prisoners by the end of the year, it has been revealed.

A Home Office spokesman said that ministers expected the target to be met, and said the facilitated return scheme was being enhanced because it had proved a "practical and cost-effective" means of persuading inmates to return home to complete their sentences.

The scheme was initially introduced in 2006 by then Home Secretary John Reid as a means of easing the prisons overcrowding crisis. Prisoners from outside the European Economic Area were offered a reintegration package of £800 to help with education, training, housing and resettlement on their return to their home country.

Now, changes introduced without fanfare mean that any prisoner applying before December 7 and leaving Britain before January 1 will be able to apply for help totalling £1,500.

Mark Leech, the editor of the Prisons Handbook, said that the move "gives totally the wrong impression", particularly as many of the 10,000-plus foreign prisoners in UK jails are poor people from Caribbean countries who sought to make money by acting as drugs "mules".

"What message are we sending out that you get convicted and then can receive a £1,500 package of help with training, education and resettlement on returning home? It is just wrong," he said.

Conservative justice spokesman Nick Herbert said: "Gordon Brown talked tough when he promised to remove all foreign criminals. Now it appears he is having to resort to larger bribes to beg them to leave.

"The suspicion is that the Government is desperate to meet a target for deportations, which in any case is only a fraction of the foreign national prison population."

A total of 2,784 foreign national prisoners were removed or deported between April 2006 and March 2007.

[Spleesh]

and they say crime doesn't pay
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


even if you feck up and get caught, you still get a pay-off
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


still, must be cheaper than keeping them on the books
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Hibsean]

Originally Posted by Spleesh
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

and they say crime doesn't pay
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


even if you feck up and get caught, you still get a pay-off
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


still, must be cheaper than keeping them on the books
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I wonder what would happen if we went to different countries and broke the law.
Why am I wondering, yer fecked!!
No free flight home and deffo , No " here's a few quid tae tide ye over"

[wee 162]

It's basically a way of getting shot of people a lot more cheaply and a lot quicker than the law can do.

The alternative is to spend thousands on lawyers, plus the cost of having someone in jail over the time till appeals etc are exhausted.

It's an absolute certainty that the government will be saving a fortune doing this, and it is also a certainty that the offences which people are serving will not be for something which you can automatically deport someone for (ie crimes of violence). It's shifting the costs of our criminal system onto other countries which will be mostly poor.

[cavalier]

Put them on a plane and save even more!

[Hibsean]

Originally Posted by cavalier
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Put them on a plane and save even more!

Target practice for the boy's!!

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by cavalier
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Put them on a plane and save even more!

Except they can't actually be deported for what they've done. At least not straight away because the laws on deportation do not cover these offences. What they can do is go through the process of trying to deport someone via the courts with no guarantee of success. Which is expensive and time consuming anyway.

IIRC the cost of keeping someone in a UK jail is £28,000 a year. Transferring the cost to keep people in a jail in their country of origin is going to be much cheaper than that, even if you do give them 1500 quid to go voluntarily.

If you don't then you have to keep on paying for people to make court appearances (ie immigration staff, polis etc) and then add on the costs of lawyers for both the defence and crown since those they are trying to deport will in all likeliehood need legal representation paid for out of the legal aid budget. The normal court resources for judges and clerks etc will obviously also be getting paid.

On the face of it I can understand peoples annoyance at stuff like this, but honestly it will definitely work out loads cheaper than taking the legal route. If it's also being used for training etc then it at least has a chance of stopping these people doing the same again.