12,000: Size of the Army of Foreign Criminals Living in Britain Today

The staggering scale of Britain’s foreign criminal population is exposed today.

There are more than 700 murderers and 500 rapists among nearly 12,000 foreign offenders in this country, figures show.

For the first time, the Home Office has published a detailed breakdown of the offences and nationality of every criminal from around the world, who is currently on its books having been convicted of offences in this country.

In total, nearly one in six has been found guilty of an offence categorised as ‘most serious’–including murder, rape, terrorism and sex offences against children.

Murderers and rapists alone make up more than one in ten of the total.

The nationality breakdown shows Britain hosts a ‘United Nations of Crime’, with offenders from 177 different countries. It shows there are more Jamaican criminals here than any other nationality–a total of 1,026–or around 2 per cent of the entire Jamaican population in the UK.

Second on the list is Nigeria, followed by Poland and Somalia. The top ten countries alone account for more than 5,500 criminals.

The figures were uncovered by Labour’s immigration spokesman David Hanson using a question tabled in Parliament.

He told the Mail: ‘Foreign criminals have no place in Britain and there is no excuse for ministers not deporting them as early as possible.

‘Yet under this Government fewer are being removed and it’s taking longer; Labour has clear plans for making it easier to deport foreign criminals but Theresa May still won’t get a grip and remove people who shouldn’t be here.’ But Tory MP Michael Ellis, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee said: ‘The hypocrisy from Labour is nauseating. It was the previous Labour government’s ramshackle immigration arrangements that facilitated entry of many of these individuals in the first place.

‘And the Human Rights Act created an imbalance in favour of foreign criminals which we are having to correct.’

The full list, entitled the Foreign National Offender Caseload, includes all 11,719 convicted foreign criminals the Home Office is managing, whether they are in prison, in immigration detention or at large. It excludes those who have been given the right to remain permanently in this country under human rights laws.

Their numbers include 775 murderers, 587 rapists, 155 child rapists, and 15 convicted terrorists. Also in the category of most serious offences are 99 other killers convicted of manslaughter, and 228 paedophiles.

There are also 88 criminals found guilty of attempted murder, 1,022 of serious violent assaults, 497 burglars, and 43 arsonists. In total, 2,247 were convicted of the production, supply, or importing drugs. More than 8,000 offences are listed simply as ‘other’.

The breakdown shows that of the total, more than 1,100 are unlikely to face deportation because they were jailed for less than a year–the threshold for automatic deportation of criminals outside the EU. A total of 1,075 were handed indefinite or life terms and 2,831 five years or more.

Last night immigration and security minister James Brokenshire said: ‘Many of these cases are a legacy of the last government–which this Government is taking action to deal with. Last year, we removed more than 5,000 foreign criminals, the highest number since 2010/11.’