The most recent available statistics, from October last year, show around 20% of the prison population was on remand while 12% of the total prison population was made up of foreign nationals.
However, a third of the foreign national prison population is on remand, meaning they will have been counted twice and the true combined figure of the two groups is around 27% of the prison population.
Former Conservative Justice Secretary David Gauke, who is chair of the Independent Sentencing Review, said: ‘It is clear that in order to address the capacity issues we face, we must have an honest conversation about who we send to prison, and for how long.
In her response to the report, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said there will ‘always be space for us to lock up dangerous offenders’, with plans to build 14,000 more prison places.
Prison are close to running out of room because politicians have spent decades pushing for harsher sentences in an effort to appear ‘tough on crime’, a new report says.
