Demographics of the deportation of Foreign National Offenders from the UK since 2010

 Dr Richard Kapend is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Quantitative Research Methods at the University of Winchester Department of Policing, Criminology and Forensics. Richard has extensive research and teaching experience in Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Quantitative Research Methods.

Dr Gill Cressey is an Assistant Professor in Criminology and teaches modules on border criminology at Coventry University. She has also conducted wide-ranging research on young people’s experiences of race, gender, religion, and migration.

The UK Borders Act 2007 introduced a requirement for prisons to ascertain and record the citizenship of prisoners and share details with immigration and border force agencies, using a centralised computer system. Of more than 160 nationalities returned, more than half of the returns come from five nationalities, according to the Office for National Statistics. We concentrate on the top ten in our analysis of trends in the demography of ‘Foreign National Offender’ (FNO) deportees.

We investigate who has been deported from the UK as FNOs by analysing official government recorded statistics to create a demographic picture, against the background of political and public discourses. A key debate in UK public discourse on crime and immigration is the protection of citizens from crime versus fair judicial process. Human rights and life chances are at stake not only for the people deported but for their families and communities. A clear, evidence-based understanding of the trends and patterns of this process is difficult to find amongst political controversies and limited official reporting. In this post we try to make an inroad by examining the data on the nationalities of FNOs deported from the UK since 2010, asking whether they are more criminal or more policed than people with other nationalities.

Crown courts in England and Wales deal with serious criminal cases sent to trial. The symbolism outside links the criminal justice system to national emblems such as the flag and the Crown. For foreign nationals on trial this has a different magnitude than for those with British citizenship because if found guilty and sentenced to more than 12 months they will be assessed for deportation. They could be considered for an Early Removal Scheme to serve part of the sentence in the country of their nationality, or they could face deportation once time served.

Despite the rhetoric of British politicians, like those made in a debate in the UK Parliament in 2021, the overall number of deportations of FNOs has reduced since 2012. With the exception of Albania, which is immediately outside the borders of the European Union, the number of non-EU FNO deportations went down whilst the number of deportations to EU countries such as Romania, Poland, and Lithuania, went up, according to published UK Government migration statistics in 2021 and as shown in Fig. 1 below. The British government's stance is that given the disparity of social and economic conditions in various parts of Europe, deportation not only serves local public protection, but it is also punitive and therefore acts as a deterrent. Post-conflict Southeast European countries, known as the Balkans, have been depicted in Western Europe as sources of organised crime, and have become a focus for othering. Discourses about so-called ‘mafia states’ have been institutionalised in law enforcement initiatives such as specialist teams of Europol. So are there differences in levels of criminality, or is the return of Foreign National Offenders from the UK to the Balkans region a result of geopolitical strategies, institutional discrimination, and a new wave of xenophobia?

According to Fig. 1, the number of FNO deportations between 2010 and 2022 peaked in 2016 but started to decrease from 2017 and seems to continue doing so. A rapid decrease can be observed from 2019, probably due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite the decrease in the overall number of FNOs deported, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, and Albania still constitute the largest group.

The policy context impacting these trends includes bilateral agreements between the UK and countries such as Albania. Some other non-EU nationalities are unlikely to be deported because of the human rights obligations of the UK government as a signatory to international treaties, prohibiting deportation to unsafe countries such as Somalia. Before the UK left the EU, an increase in the number of EU nationals in the UK through freedom of movement increased the number of deportations to EU countries, especially newer EU member countries with poorer economies than their neighbours. EU deportations have continued because they are difficult to appeal using a human rights defence.

Based on the ONS figures, the number of FNOs from selected EU countries removed per 1,000 population of their country of birth or nationality living in the UK (FNO deportation rate), has been increasing from 2014 to 2020 before a decrease between 2020 and 2021. An increase in the number of these FNOs can again be observed between 2021 and 2022, as shown in Fig. 2 below.

From Fig. 2 above, it can be seen, for instance, that the deportation rate for Albanians has been consistently high: there have been at least 13 deportations out of every 1,000 Albanians living in the UK every year between 2015 and 2020, despite a decrease in FNO deportation for most countries. The deportation rate for Romanians, Lithuanians and Polish has remained similar between 2014 and 2020, with an average of 4, 2 and 1 FNOs deported respectively.

It can be concluded that selected FNOs are over-represented in existing/available figures of deported offenders. However, caution is needed when interpreting these figures since they can be affected by some of the limitations associated with the ONS data series used. The FNO deportation rates presented above are based on:

1. the Migrant Workers Survey (MWS) see ONS, ‘Short-Term International Migration methodology – local authority estimates’ and
2. the Annual Population Surveys (APS).

In relation to the (MWS), despite living in the UK, foreign nationals who have not registered with the Migrant Workers Survey are not included in this dataset. Similarly, the number of foreign nationals by country of birth or nationality from the ONS from the APS and is used in as the denominator. The APS series only includes data from the top 60 countries with the highest population size.

For these reasons, FNOs deportation rates for countries mentioned above may not be a true reflection of the reality. To overcome some of these issues extrapolated figures have been used bringing a minor level of uncertainty to the model. Despite the minor uncertainty, these figures provide nonetheless educated estimates of FNO deportation rates.

The return of foreign national offenders from the UK to the Balkans region stands out as an example of amplification whereby criminal interests exploit law enforcement vulnerabilities and then regional government agencies join forces to divert resources to fight back at a fortified border, resulting in the intensification of policing, prosecutions, and deportations. Since the pattern of deportations of FNOs from the UK described here suggests that  decisions are not simply based on the rate of criminality of nationals but are strongly influenced by geopolitical factors, and with the latest net migration figures from the ONS revealing that in 2022 most immigrants to the UK were from non-EU countries, perhaps the top ten nationalities deported will start to shift.

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