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Repatriating European Prisoners (1)

01 January 1991

Repatriating European Prisoners
artdoc March=1995

A report from the Penal Affairs Consortium calls for reforms to
enable more prisoners from other European countries in British
prisons to be transferred to their own countries. The UK ratified
the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced
Prisoners in 1985 but in the intervening eight years only 92 had
been successfully repatriated. In September 1993 there were 846
prisoners form EU states in British prisons. 529 of these were
Irish nationals but the Republic of Ireland is the only EU state
not to have ratified the Convention. The report says:
Prisons in England and Wales are often ill-equipped to meet the
social, educational and welfare needs of foreign nationals.
Foreign nationals tend to be alienated from the main cultural
environment of the prison, are not adequately catered for by
training and educational services, experience the breakdown of
family ties and are denied home visits outside the UK to help
them reintegrate into their communities before their release.
Allowing foreign nationals to return to their own countries to
serve their sentence would seem the obvious solution.

Repatriating European Prisoners: the repatriation of sentenced
prisoners from England and Wales to other member states of the
European Union, November, 1994, 8 pages, available free from: The
Penal Affairs Consortium, c/o 169 Clapham Road, London SW9 0PU.

Statewatch, Vol 4 no 6, November-December 1994