UK Jails: Hundreds of Nigerian Prisoners to be Sent Home Under Deal

David Cameron

Hundreds of Nigerian criminals will be sent home to serve out prison sentences under a deal set to be struck by ministers within weeks.
Talks are continuing into reaching a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement, which could see more than half of the 500 criminals from Nigeria currently in UK jails repatriated.

Prisons minister Jeremy Wright told MailOnline how 'more foreign prisoners must serve their sentences in their own countries'. Ministers have been ordered to step up efforts to end the scandal of more than one in eight prisoners being from overseas.

David Cameron vowed to end the practice of the British taxpayer picking up the bill for criminals with no business in the UK, reports Daily News of London.
The Prime Minister said in 2010 that he would ’personally intervene’ to send more foreign criminals home.

Britain has even made clear it would pay to build new prisons in countries like Nigeria to speed up the process of sending foreign criminals home. Up to £1million has been promised to upgrade Nigerian jails, including a new wing at Kirikiri Prison in Lagos.

But to date little progress has been made. When the coalition was formed there were 11,135 foreign prisoners in UK jails, and this figure has fallen by just three per cent since to 10,786.