UK Politics
775 Jamaican Offenders Awaiting Deportation, 24 Sent Back: The Country Figures Behind Britain’s Backlog
775 Jamaican offenders await deportation, yet 24 were sent back in a year. The Times country figures, the 21,294 record and what the Home Office says.
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Should Britain cut visas and aid to countries that won’t take back their convicted criminals?
News | By Matt, Editor
775 Jamaican offenders living in British communities while the Home Office tries to deport them. 24 Jamaican offenders sent back in the year before. That’s one of the country-by-country figures The Times has published for the first time, and it isn’t the worst of them.
For Nigeria the paper reports 773 offenders in the community and 37 returned in the preceding 12 months. For Algeria, 569 in the community and returns running at 4.2% of that number. For Somalia, it says, the figure is 1.9%.
The figures are for June 2025, under this government. Overall, around 20,000 foreign offenders subject to deportation were living free in the community at the time. That total isn’t new. The country breakdown is.
1 commentTap to readKey facts
- Jamaica: 775 offenders in the community, 24 returned in the previous 12 months (The Times, via GB News).
- Nigeria: 773 in the community, 37 returned, a ratio of 4.8%.
- Algeria: 569 in the community, returns at 4.2% of that number. Bangladesh around 6%. Somalia 1.9%, the Times reports.
- Romania, by contrast: 1,399 in the community and 990 returned in the year to June 2025.
- The latest official figure is higher still. Home Office transparency data shows 21,294 foreign national offenders subject to deportation living in the community at the end of June 2026, a record.
What the numbers do and don’t mean
One health warning, because it matters. The returns figures include people put on a plane straight from prison as well as those removed from the community, so the ratios are a rough comparison of returns against the caseload, not the odds that any one person will be removed. GB News, reporting the Times figures, says as much. Some of those living in the community may also be tagged.
Even allowing for that, the gap between countries is huge. Romanian offenders are being returned at a rate the Home Office can only dream of for Jamaica, Nigeria or Algeria. EU nationals made up just over half of all foreign offender returns in the year to June 2026, according to the government’s own returns statistics. Albania, which signed a returns deal with Britain in December 2022, has topped the list five years running.
In other words, removals work where there’s a deal and a country willing to take people back. Where there isn’t, the cases pile up.
The Home Office answer
A Home Office spokesman said: “Any foreign national who receives a prison sentence in the UK is referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity and will be barred from ever returning.”
“Returns are at their highest level in nearly a decade. Nearly 12,000 foreign criminals, including murderers and rapists, have been returned or deported in the two years since the last election – a 41 per cent increase on the two years prior.”
That claim checks out. The returns statistics show 5,962 foreign offender returns in the year to June 2026, up 12% and the highest since 2017. But the backlog is growing faster. In a written answer on 8 September, Home Office minister Jo White put the June 2026 total at 21,294 and said the rise since last year “mainly occurred after March 2026”, because the Sentencing Act 2026 widened the duty to deport to foreign offenders given suspended sentences of 12 months or more. Many of those were never going to be in a cell.
So part of the jump is the government’s own law catching more people. That’s a fair point. It doesn’t explain why Jamaica, Nigeria and Algeria were barely moving a year before that law existed.
“A tiny fraction”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told The Times: “Only a tiny fraction of criminals from countries like Jamaica, Nigeria, Somalia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe or even India get returned.”
He went on: “Endless human rights claims and the absurd Labour belief that it is somehow racist to return criminals to Jamaica mean these dangerous men stay in the UK and have gone on to commit crimes like rape and murder here after they should have been deported for previous offences.”
Philp’s party ran the Home Office for 14 years, of course, and the backlog grew on their watch too. The community total was already 17,677 at the end of June 2024, before Labour took over. It has gone up every quarter since.
And Brussels wants fewer removals
The one group Britain does manage to remove in large numbers is EU offenders. Yet a draft statement for this month’s UK-EU summit asks Britain not to proceed with early removals and deportations of EU nationals under the Sentencing Act, as we reported last week. That draft hasn’t been signed off.
This is a different set of figures from the 1,848 deported criminals caught back in Britain over five years, which we reported on Sunday. Those were people already removed who came back. These are people who haven’t gone yet.
Our view
The Home Office keeps pointing at its removals total, and the total is up. Nobody disputes that. But a deportation order is a promise to the public that someone convicted here will leave, and for some countries that promise is being kept for a handful of people a year.
If a country won’t take its own offenders back, there are levers: visas, aid, trade. The Home Secretary has already said Eritreans will be barred from entering Britain until a returns deal is done, according to GB News. So why not use the same pressure on the countries at the bottom of these tables? Until someone does, the number living free here will keep climbing, whatever the press release says.
Should Britain cut visas and aid to countries that won’t take back their convicted criminals? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- The Times, 8 November 2026: country figures for June 2025 and Chris Philp quotes (paywalled; figures as reported by GB News)
- GB News, 8 November 2026: country figures, caveats and Home Office statement
- UK Parliament written answer 26206, 8 September 2026: 21,294 at end of June 2026 and the Sentencing Act explanation
- GOV.UK: How many people are returned from the UK? Year ending June 2026: 5,962 FNO returns, EU share, Albania
- GOV.UK: Migration transparency data: foreign offenders in the community, quarterly
Main image: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at the APCC and NPCC Partnership Summit, November 2025. UK Home Office / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Social images also use photos from the UK Home Office (CC BY 4.0), the House of Commons (CC BY 3.0), David Holt (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Grammaticus Bramlington (CC BY 2.0).
Related
- Kicked Out, Back In: 1,848 Deported Foreign Criminals Caught Back in Britain in Five Years
- Deportations Explained: Why Britain Removes So Few
- EU Demands UK Drop Plan to Deport European Criminals
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How many RAF transporter aircraft sit not used and can carry loads to these countries for returns, use the military. Hang on sorry we have none and they do not have in flight entertainment or in flight food.