UK Considers Sending Prisoners to Estonia to Ease Overcrowding Crisis

[Social Media]

 

The UK government is exploring the possibility of sending offenders to Estonia to address the severe overcrowding in British prisons. According to Sky News, this proposal is one of several options under consideration as the prison system in England and Wales faces extreme pressure, with only around 1,000 spaces reportedly remaining.

 

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has repeatedly warned that the escalating overcrowding crisis could undermine law and order unless immediate action is taken to reduce the strain on the prison system. The problem has been exacerbated in recent months, particularly following riots triggered by the Southport stabbings. Last month, it was reported that there were just 100 spare spaces left in male prisons across the region, bringing the system dangerously close to full capacity.

 

To alleviate the crisis, the government has already implemented several controversial measures, including the early release of prisoners who have served just 40% of their sentences. Typically, offenders in England and Wales, except for the most serious, are released on licence after serving 50% of their sentences. However, this threshold has now been reduced in a bid to free up more prison space. Magistrates have also been advised to consider delaying sentencing for certain offenders to help manage the overcrowding issue.

 

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson stated, “The new government inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons on the point of collapse. We will continue to investigate all viable options to increase the number of places in the prisons estate so we can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public.”

 

The concept of sending UK prisoners to Estonia was first proposed by former Justice Secretary Alex Chalk. At last year's Conservative Party conference, Chalk revealed that the previous government, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, had initiated exploratory talks with several European countries to potentially rent prison space abroad. The proposal stipulated that any agreements with foreign prisons would need to meet UK standards in terms of facilities and rehabilitation programs. This approach mirrors actions taken by Belgium and Norway, which have rented prison space in the Netherlands over the past decade.

 

In her first address as Justice Secretary, Mahmood criticized the previous administration, accusing Sunak and his team of failing to act on clear warnings about the state of the prison system. “Rishi Sunak and his gang in Number 10 were too weak to heed the warning signs that were flashing,” she said.

 

According to leaked documents, more than 10,000 prisoners were released early between October last year and June this year under the previous government’s policies, highlighting the ongoing struggle to manage the prison population. The current administration continues to explore all possible solutions, including the controversial option of relocating prisoners abroad, as it seeks to address one of the most pressing issues facing the UK justice system today.

 

 

Credit: Sky News 2024-09-07

 

 

 

Get the ASEAN NOW daily NEWSLETTER - Click HERE to subscribe

[Chomper Higgot]

Not a bad idea, but perhaps start by repatriating some of the thousands of foreigners in UK prisons.

 

Asking Albania, Poland Romania and Ireland to take care of some of their criminal citizens would put a dent in the over UK Prisons overcrowding problem.

 

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/872023/leading-nationalities-of-foreign-prisoners-in-england-and-wales/

[RichardColeman]

How about sending every migrant that lands here on a beach there for processing too ? 

[Hakuna Matata]

Yes, why not? Business as usual. How many billion euro are you prepared to pay Estonia for this service? Lithuania also wants to have a piece of this cake, probably.

[nauseus]

31 minutes ago, Hakuna Matata said:

Yes, why not? Business as usual. How many billion euro are you prepared to pay Estonia for this service? Lithuania also wants to have a piece of this cake, probably.

 

Maybe. Until the cake goes off. 

 

Meanwhile .... the Germans have a bid in for Butlins in Kigali.

[jcmj]

Is it not cheaper to just build a few more large prisons in the middle of nowhere? 

[jippytum]

What a stupid 'pie in the sky ' idea .They couldn't even send illegal immigrants to Rwanda not much chance to send UK prisoners to a foreign country. Would they pay for relatives to visit ??

[Chomper Higgot]

3 minutes ago, jippytum said:

What a stupid 'pie in the sky ' idea .They couldn't even send illegal immigrants to Rwanda not much chance to send UK prisoners to a foreign country. Would they pay for relatives to visit ??

A different ‘They’.

[youreavinalaff]

7 minutes ago, jcmj said:

Is it not cheaper to just build a few more large prisons in the middle of nowhere? 

How long would that take?

 

The problem building things like prisons, also things like nuclear power stations and social housing, is everyone is up for the idea until they realise it's going to be in their back yard.

 

Then the protests start snd planning and building gets delayed.

[youreavinalaff]

1 minute ago, Chomper Higgot said:

A different ‘They’.

Agreed.

 

The current "they" were the ones who constantly derailed the Rwanda project. Finally cancelling it without putting any other project in its place.

[Chomper Higgot]

Just now, youreavinalaff said:

Agreed.

 

The current "they" were the ones who constantly derailed the Rwanda project. Finally cancelling it without putting any other project in its place.

Now all you have to do is explain how a party in opposition manages to derail the policies of a Government in possession of an 80 seat majority.

 

Give it your best try.

 

 

[youreavinalaff]

10 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Now all you have to do is explain how a party in opposition manages to derail the policies of a Government in possession of an 80 seat majority.

 

Give it your best try.

 

 

You know the answers. This has been discussed many times.

 

I'm not going to get into listening to your broken records 

[Chomper Higgot]

38 minutes ago, youreavinalaff said:

You know the answers. This has been discussed many times.

 

I'm not going to get into listening to your broken records 

 

Yep, you made a ridiculous claim and you aren’t happy I pointed out the gaping hole in it.

 

That you have done so in the past only confirms your pattern behaviour.

 

The Tory Rwanda scheme failed because it was ill conceived performative cruelty that was from the outset in breach of UK law.

 

Hundreds of £millions of tax payer’s money pished away on performative cruelty that was doomed to fail and did exactly that.

 

 

[Homburg]

Hey Shabana Mahmood, import the World's criminals and the prisons fill up. Who'd have thought?  

[daveAustin]

Here's an idea; stop putting people away that express an opinion (ONLY) and clearly don't deserve to be there, as well as those that choose to partake in a certain weed (F a doodle do!), deport criminal illegals and put to sleep murderers! Is that not humane or does that statement offend people? 

[daveAustin]

For such a small place that has had a massive impact on the world today (looking to the positives), the UK has regressed into one of the most depressingly pathetic places on the planet... at the behest of its own people no less. Its future does not look good.

[NoshowJones]

7 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Not a bad idea, but perhaps start by repatriating some of the thousands of foreigners in UK prisons.

 

Asking Albania, Poland Romania and Ireland to take care of some of their criminal citizens would put a dent in the over UK Prisons overcrowding problem.

 

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/872023/leading-nationalities-of-foreign-prisoners-in-england-and-wales/

I never agree with your politics, but I would agree with the government sending foreign prisoners back to their own countries or somewhere out of the road.

Any way of getting immigrants who don't  contribute to the UK economy out of the country is fine by me.

[mrfill]

2 hours ago, jippytum said:

What a stupid 'pie in the sky ' idea .They couldn't even send illegal immigrants to Rwanda not much chance to send UK prisoners to a foreign country. Would they pay for relatives to visit ??

You cannot determine if a migrant is illegal until they are processed. Once processing is done, if the application fails, the applicant can be deported without problem (as has been happening a lot more recently owing to the increase in number of processors). The boats only started big time when the previous government closed all the 'safe routes' (where applicants were processed off shore) and reduced drastically the number of processors. This stupidity meant it took anything up to 3 years to process instead of a few weeks and led to putting applicants in closed hotels at huge expense. With faster processing and safe routes open,  there would be no need to line the hoteliers pockets handsomely as happens now. The UK still needs people to work in the NHS, fruit & veg picking, care workers and hospitality staff - all traditionally done by migrant workers - and it needs fewer people believing that the UK can supply all its employment needs. It hasn't managed that for 5 centuries and idiotic and bigoted thinking won't change that.

[Caldera]

What, they don't ship them off to Australia anymore?

[youreavinalaff]

5 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

 

Yep, you made a ridiculous claim and you aren’t happy I pointed out the gaping hole in it.

 

That you have done so in the past only confirms your pattern behaviour.

 

The Tory Rwanda scheme failed because it was ill conceived performative cruelty that was from the outset in breach of UK law.

 

Hundreds of £millions of tax payer’s money pished away on performative cruelty that was doomed to fail and did exactly that.

 

 

Selective reading and memory from you, as per.

 

 

[Chomper Higgot]

16 minutes ago, youreavinalaff said:

Selective reading and memory from you, as per.

 

 

Which you could substantiate with some facts, and links if you had any.

 

An ill conceived policy that was  bound from the onset to fail.

Hundreds of £millions of tax payers money pished away with absolutely no benefit to the nation.

 

Brought to you by a Government with a massive majority in Parliament.

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/15/rwanda-plan-tatters-defeat-undermines-entire-tory-project
 

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-the-uks-policy-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda/

[GinBoy2]

I'd say send them to the US.

 

I'm pretty sure our prisons are Hell on Earth compared to anything in Europe.

 

They will either get the sh**it scared outta them or die

 

They might come back as better people

[youreavinalaff]

23 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Which you could substantiate with some facts, and links if you had any.

 

An ill conceived policy that was  bound from the onset to fail.

Hundreds of £millions of tax payers money pished away with absolutely no benefit to the nation.

 

Brought to you by a Government with a massive majority in Parliament.

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/15/rwanda-plan-tatters-defeat-undermines-entire-tory-project
 

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-the-uks-policy-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda/

I have no links as to why you only comprehend what you want to and ignore what you don't.

 

There are many psychology citations I could quote but none specific to you.

[Doctor Tom]

No point re inventing the wheel; send them to Australia.  It worked out well the last time and it took many decades before they started to trickle back. . 

[MalcolmB]

18 minutes ago, Doctor Tom said:

No point re inventing the wheel; send them to Australia.  It worked out well the last time and it took many decades before they started to trickle back. . 

Like the Spainiards, the Aborigines don’t like us anymore.

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, youreavinalaff said:

I have no links as to why you only comprehend what you want to and ignore what you don't.

 

There are many psychology citations I could quote but none specific to you.

Oh a personal attack.

 

Now that’s new.

[MicroB]

6 hours ago, jcmj said:

Is it not cheaper to just build a few more large prisons in the middle of nowhere? 

 

No one seems to have read the report. Its one of a number of options being explored. It doesn't mean this is what is going to be done.

 

Prisons could be built, but they take a long time to build. Assuming you will get the private sector to build them, rather than a mythical workforce of State Brickies, there is a long lead time isn:

 

1. Identifying sites; locals will need to be consulted, environmental risk assessments, security risk assessments.

2. Identify funding; the Home Office will need to fund the construction and manning of prisons, but do they do this within their existing budget, which means other programmes will have to be cut, or are they going to get an increase from the Treasury. Different rules apply to whether its a Capital project (building a prison) versus paying for a service.

3. Issuing calls for tender. There is a UK Procurement Act 2023 that repeals 350 EU Directive related requirements. Drawing up the requirements takes time. When we say a large prison, how large? What category of prisoners? How many screws? Scrutinizing submissions takes time, unless you want another COVID19 contracting debacle, with people like James Dyson or Richard Branson suddenly getting into the Justice Game. Takes years, from issuing the tenders, design/surveys, construction, acceptance, likely 5-10 years

4. Manning the Prisons. There is a shortage of Prison Officers going back at least 10 years. This is curious, as there should be the biggest pool of potential recruits for many a year. Traditionally, the police, fire service, prison service can rely on a pool of ex-services people, and in recent years, there should have been a pretty big pool of very experienced people available.. Even so, you don't take a guy off the street, stick him/her in a uniform, and send them into a prison riot. 4 out of 5 prisons have insufficience riot-trained officers.

 

As for emptying prisons of foreigners, there are two approaches;

 

1. Secure the agreement of the receiving country; what they do with them, we don't care. Well we might if those convicts are people who are considered a threat to the UK

2. Don't secure an agreement. Just give them a one way ticket. Receiving countries might start to refuse flights from the UK, because we keep shoving thieves and murderers on the Ryan Air flights.

 

A knock on of this is any foreigner wanting to go home for free just has to knock a grannie down in the street, thereby increasing the crime rate, because for foreigners, there is now no downside in committing crime.

 

Realistically, the government needs to look at renting temporary accomodation, ie the oil industry crew barges that have previously been used for prison accomodation. These are readily available.

 

eg the Safe Esperia was a floating accommodation barge for the offshore oil and gas industry. There was a whole fleet of them. Bibby Line brought it, renamed it Bibby Resolution. It was then chartered to the MOD to serve as floating troop accomodation in the Falklands. In 1988, it, and a sister ship, were sold to the New York Department of Corrections, as a temporary prison ship. It was closed in 1992, then sold off in 1994. In 1997, the  Resolution was now HMP Weare in the UK, a temporary prison ship. It ran until 2006; turned out it was really expensive to run as a prison. Currently its in Nigeria, where it was towed to originally to serve as probably pretty grim oil industry crew accomodation.

 

If you include people with one or both parents born in Ireland or Northern Ireland, then over 10% of the population is likely dual national, and thus cannot be rendered stateless by removal of British citizenship. This likely reflects in the prison population, ie about 10,000 people. If removal of foreign criminals is considered as a viable option, then this could also be considered. Its pretty dystopian though.

 

 

[MicroB]

1 hour ago, Doctor Tom said:

No point re inventing the wheel; send them to Australia.  It worked out well the last time and it took many decades before they started to trickle back. . 

 

Many were also sent to North America to work the tobacco plantations.

[MicroB]

3 hours ago, Caldera said:

What, they don't ship them off to Australia anymore?

 

It stopped in 1868, following decades of public process.

 

One of my hobbies is geneology. Often the research can lead you down false warren holes, but you learn a lot. I thought one of my ancestors had been transported. When looking at this person, I discovered a lot about the whole process. It might take years to be actually transported. You were taken to some prison ship, maybe at Portsmouth. And there you remained until the ship was filled. For this particular person, that meant 3 years aboard what I can imagine to be a stinking place. I was shocked, but I suppose it was obvious.

[youreavinalaff]

7 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Oh a personal attack.

 

Now that’s new.

No attack. 

 

Just answering your previous comment.

 

If there is a link to explain your lack of comprehension, I must have missed it.

 

Sorry about that.