The Migration Observatory informs debates on international migration and public policy. Learn more about us Donate Search Twitter Facebook Vimeo Menu Publications Projects Press & Commentary About Search Home / publications / briefings / Migrants and crime in the UK 18 Aug 2026 Share Tweet This briefing provides the available evidence on migration and crime in the UK. Key Points Research on how migration affects crime rates in the UK is limited. Studies based on data from the 2000s and 2010s suggested that migration did not affect violent crime or property crime rates on average, but that a larger number of asylum seekers was associated with an increase in rates of property crime. More… Most offences never lead to a conviction, so actual rates of offending among different groups in the population are unknown. However, non-UK citizens made up 13.1% of people given cautions or convictions in 2024, and 12.1% of the prison population in June 2025. This was roughly similar to their share of the adult population. The share of non-citizens among people convicted or incarcerated is lower when taking age into account. This is because non-citizens tend to be younger, and criminal offending takes place primarily among young men. More… The most common non-UK nationalities of people in English and Welsh prisons at the end of 2025 were Albanian, Irish, and Polish. Incarceration and conviction rates vary by nationality but it is difficult to compare them accurately due to data gaps. More… The available data suggest that non-citizens were more likely to be convicted or incarcerated for drug offences and less likely for violent offences, compared to British citizens. More… Non-citizens are less likely to receive bail than citizens and are overrepresented in the population of people on remand awaiting trial. Around 25% of non-citizens in prisons had not yet been tried, compared to 11% of British citizens. More… The government does not publish data on the share of foreign national offenders (FNOs) who are deported. However, the number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) living in the community has increased over the past decade, suggesting that returns have not kept pace with prison releases. More… Between 2015 and 2022, an average of 420 non-citizen offenders each year successfully appealed against their return on human rights grounds. A further 840 per year appealed unsuccessfully. More… From 2016 to mid-2022, an estimated 11% of FNOs removed from the UK took up financial incentives to return, and 38% left under the ‘early release’ scheme, which allows deportees to leave prison before serving their mandatory sentence. Policies to transfer offenders to prisons in other countries to serve their sentence overseas are rarely used. More… Migrants were less likely to be victims of crime than the UK-born, although they were more likely to be victims of hate crimes. More… In 2024, consular staff at the Foreign Office provided assistance in around 4,600 new arrest and detention cases involving British citizens in other countries. More… Understanding the Policy The immigration system takes non-citizens' criminal convictions into account in different ways, depending on the immigration status that the person has or is applying for. ... Click to read more. Applications to enter the UK Home Office guidance says that it must refuse all applications for temporary visas, such as work or family visas, where: the applicant has been convicted for an offence – either in the UK or overseas – that resulted in a prison sentence of 12 months or more; is a ‘persistent offender’ with a series of more minor offences; or has committed an offence which caused serious harm to victims or society (this includes most violent or sexual offences attracting sentences of less than a year). In March 2026, the Home Office lowered the refusal threshold to include visa applicants who had received a suspended sentence (i.e., a prison sentence served in the community rather than in prison) of at least 12 months. Previously, applications could be refused if the applicant had been convicted of an offence for which they received a non-custodial sentence or a custodial sentence of 12 months or less, but this was not mandatory. Asylum seekers may be denied refugee status if they have been convicted of an offence that led to a custodial sentence of at least a year or an offence that puts them on the sex offenders’ register. The Home Office conducts security checks on all asylum claimants, screening them against police databases to identify any criminal history, both in the UK and overseas. However, under human rights legislation, refused asylum seekers may be able to avoid deportation if they successfully challenge it on human rights grounds. In these cases, the Home Office will grant the individual ‘restricted leave’, a short period of leave to remain (typically 6 months) that can be extended repeatedly. Criminal convictions and the right to remain in the UK If a foreign national offender (FNO) is already living in the UK, the Home Secretary is legally required to pursue their deportation if they receive custodial sentences of 12 months or more, either for a single offence or for multiple offences over a five-year period. The government lowered the deportation threshold in March 2026 to also include foreign nationals who had received a suspended sentence of 12 months or more. In theory, the Home Office can deport most people without British citizenship (i.e., people with a temporary immigration status or indefinite leave to remain) regardless of how long they have lived in the UK. However, there are some exceptions to automatic deportation. There is no duty to deport people who were under 18 at the time of their conviction, for example. There is a higher threshold for deporting EU citizens who committed offences before the end of December 2020. People granted refugee status can be deported only if their human rights would not be breached in the destination – a very substantial barrier to removal in some non-EU countries. Non-citizens who have been told by the Home Office they will be deported can challenge this decision on human rights grounds. These include Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which covers the right to private and family life. People sentenced to less than four years of imprisonment can seek to avoid deportation if the impact on their partner or child would be “unduly harsh”; or if they have lived legally in the UK for most of their life, are “socially and culturally integrated” and would face “very significant obstacles” to integration in the country they would be returned to. Alternatively, non-citizens may qualify to remain in the UK under Article 3 of the ECHR if they can show that there is a risk they would be tortured or subject to inhuman or degrading treatment after deportation. Foreign nationals in the criminal justice system Foreign nationals are subject to the same criminal law as UK citizens, although in practice, they may be dealt with differently in the criminal justice system. For example, while nationality alone cannot be used as a criterion for granting or denying bail, if someone is a foreign national, that may lead to them being considered a greater flight risk, which is justification for remand. Once convicted of a crime, foreign nationals may face additional immigration consequences, most notably deportation. Immigration status itself can also be a criminal matter: entering or remaining in the UK without a valid status is classed as an offence. Deportation processes There are several legal mechanisms to remove foreign offenders from the UK: The Early Removal Scheme (ERS) allows almost all prisoners serving a fixed-term sentence to be removed from the UK before the end of their custodial sentence, with the aim of freeing up prison capacity and reducing spending on the imprisonment of FNOs. The early removal period has been increased several times, from 135 days when the scheme was introduced in 2004 to a maximum of four years since September 2025. The specific time period depends on the length of the sentence and is lower for shorter sentences. FNOs removed via the ERS are not detained upon arrival in their home country, although since June 2022, they have to serve the remainder of their sentence if they return to the UK (known as the ‘stop the clock’ provision). In January 2026, the government removed the requirement that foreign national offenders serve a minimum prison sentence before removal, allowing them to be deported at any time after their sentence. The ERS is supported by the Facilitated Returns Scheme. Under this scheme, established in 2006, FNOs are given a resettlement grant upon their return to their home country, provided they comply with removal procedures. A grant of up to £1,500 can be paid, depending on when the person applies and whether they received a custodial sentence. FNOs considered vulnerable may also be eligible for an additional £500 payment, while any non-citizen children of FNOs who qualify for the scheme are eligible to receive a further grant of £1,500. A smaller number of FNOs can be removed via Prison Transfer Agreements (PTAs). These enable FNOs to be transferred to their home country, where they serve the remainder of their sentence. As of March 2025, the UK had agreements with 115 other countries. Finally, the Tariff-expired Removal Scheme is used to remove only FNOs serving indeterminate or life sentences once they have reached the minimum period they must serve before being considered for release. Non-citizens serving indeterminate or life sentences are not eligible for the Early Removal Scheme. Where an FNO is not returned before the end of their custodial sentence, they will either be placed in immigration detention or released into the community while the Home Office seeks to remove them. In some cases, an FNO will be transferred into immigration detention but subsequently released into the community. This can happen if an immigration Judge grants bail, a court orders their release, or the Home Office decides that deportation is not possible within a reasonable timescale. Foreign offenders in this situation may be granted ‘restricted leave’, usually in 6-month increments. The conditions of this permission, including whether they have the right to work, are decided case by case. FNOs who do not meet the threshold for automatic deportation are referred to as ‘non-criteria’ FNOs. Although the removal of these individuals is not mandatory, the Home Office will still pursue deportation where it can demonstrate that this would be beneficial for the UK. The Home Office also has the ability to remove British citizenship from dual nationals if this is deemed to be in the ‘public interest’ – for example, if the individual is a terrorist, extremist, or organised criminal. Between 2018 and 2023, the latest figures available, an average of 12 people per year had their British citizenship removed for these reasons. Understanding the Evidence This briefing relies primarily on data collected by the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, and devolved justice departments, including data obtained via freedom of information (FOI) requests. ... Click to read more. Cautions and convictions In response to an FOI request, the Ministry of Justice provided information on the number of cautions and convictions given – by year, nationality, and offence type – sourced from an extract of the Police National Computer. It is possible for offenders to be counted multiple times if they are sentenced in more than one year or are sentenced multiple times in the same year. If an offender has more than one nationality, they are recorded under the nationality they state as their ‘primary’ nationality. Additionally, records of nationalities that contain historical countries (e.g., Yugoslavia) are not automatically converted to their current counterparts. Note that nationality information is unavailable for a small proportion of offenders. Offences are categorised according to the Home Office’s 12 offence groups: violence against the person; sexual offences; robbery; theft offences; criminal damage and arson; drug offences; possession of weapons; public order offences; miscellaneous crimes against society; fraud offences; summary (non-motoring) offences; and summary (motoring) offences. The data do not identify the seriousness of offences within these broad categories. Immigration offences, such as entering the UK without a valid status, are classed as summary (non-motoring) offences. Assisting illegal entry is classified within ‘miscellaneous crimes against society’. Prison population Prison establishments record details for individual inmates on Prison-NOMIS, the prison IT system. The information recorded includes age, sex, nationality, custody type, offence, and sentence length. Nationality is self-reported by prisoners, and this information is not checked by prison establishments. Foreign national offenders Statistics on returns of foreign national offenders (FNOs) by nationality come from administrative data published by the Home Office. Since May 2026, the Home Office has expanded these statistics to include information on returnees’ offence type and sentence length. The data include cases where FNOs agree to return voluntarily, as well as enforced returns (i.e., where the Home Office enforces their departure). Separate transparency data contains information about the FNOs living in the community by the amount of time since the end of their custodial prison sentence. This includes any time the individual has spent in immigration detention. Separately, a break in the data occurred in October 2022, when ‘non-criteria’ FNOs – individuals who do not meet the legislative criteria for automatic deportation – started to be included in the figures if the Home Office was actively pursuing their removal. Victims of crime Data on people who are victims of crime and on reporting of crimes come from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), an annual survey which asks interviewees about their experience of crime in the past twelve months. The CSEW captures a broad range of victim-based crimes experienced by respondents, including those that were not reported to the police. However, crimes that do not have an identifiable victim (e.g., possession of drugs) are excluded, as are homicides. Estimating the impact of migration on crime rates To determine whether migration increases or decreases crime rates, analysts compare levels of immigration and crime rates in different areas – either within a country or across countries. A straightforward comparison of crime rates in high- and low-migration areas does not tell the full story, however, as migrants are more likely to live in cities, and levels of crime are higher in urban areas. In addition, crime rates may influence where people choose to live, including migrants. If migrants choose areas with lower crime rates because they prefer them, or higher crime rates due to lower house prices, this could make a comparison of high- and low-migration areas misleading. To account for this, analysts look at the change in crime in an area and the change in the foreign-born population share, and they control for other factors which could affect crime rates. Since these studies do not observe the nationality of perpetrators, it is unclear whether any change in crime rates was directly caused by migrants or by locals. For example, migration could have indirectly affected crime rates through its impact on community cohesion, which in turn might have affected criminal activity among the UK-born. On the other hand, if migrants’ criminal activities perfectly displaced the criminal activity of UK-born individuals, overall crime rates would be unaffected. For more information about the statistical approach used by analysts, see Bell (2014). What is the relationship between migration and crime rates in the UK? Criminal justice statistics show the share of convicted offenders who are citizens versus non-citizens, and they are described below. They do not show the true rate of offending, since most crimes never lead to a conviction (and this will be true for British and foreign citizens alike). Some studies instead look at how an increase in migration in a particular part of the country affects crime rates there. This analysis does not require researchers to know the identity or nationality of the perpetrator, and so can include unsolved crimes. It will also include crimes in which migrants were the victims. The available studies are few and now quite old (Table 1). Most found that migration did not have measurable impacts on average crime rates, although one found that having more asylum seekers in a local area increased property crime – such as theft, burglary, and arson – while more Eastern European EU migrants reduced it. None found an impact on violent crime. Table 1 shows the percentage change in crime rates if the share of the local population who are migrants in an area increased by 1 percentage point (e.g., say, 10% to 11%). Table 1 Focus of studyViolent crimeProperty crime Bell, Fasani and Machin (2013)England and Wales 2002 - 2009EU8 migrants: No impact Asylum seekers: No impactAsylum seekers: 1.1% increase EU8 Migrants: -0.4% decrease Jaitman and Machin (2013)England and Wales 2004 - 2010EU8 migrants: No impact Non-EU8 migrants: No impactEU8 migrants: No impact Non-EU8 migrants: No impact Fasani et al. (2019)England and Wales 2004 - 2010All migrants: No impactAll migrants: No impact Migration Advisory Committee (2018)England and Wales 2003 - 2017EEA migrants: No impactEEA migrants: No impact Some scholars have suggested that asylum seekers and EU8 migrants may have had different impacts on property crime because EU citizens were allowed to work and asylum seekers were not. Some studies from other countries have also found that unauthorised migrants with no right to work were more likely to commit crimes. However, criminology research suggests that many other factors affect risks of offending, such as childhood experiences, mental health problems, and education. Return to top Are non-citizens more or less likely to be convicted of crimes? Since most crimes never result in a conviction, the true offence rate among different groups in the population is unknown. Many factors affect whether an offender is convicted, including the type of crime, whether the crime is witnessed and reported, and how people with different backgrounds and ethnicities are treated in the criminal justice system. Separate data show that people from ethnic minorities (including UK-born citizens) are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and have different outcomes in it. Non-citizens in England and Wales accounted for 13.1% (or 43,250) of cautions and convictions in 2024 and 12.1% of the prison population (10,450 foreign national prisoners) in June 2025 (Figure 1). There is currently no official estimate of non-citizens’ share of the adult population. However, Migration Observatory calculations suggest that by 2025, roughly 13.5% of the adult population were non-citizens. In other words, the overall rate of convictions and incarceration was roughly similar for citizens and non-citizens. Foreign nationals made up 18.7% of entries into prisons in 2025, higher than their share of either convictions or the prison population. This is driven by the fact that non-citizens are less likely than British citizens to be granted bail while awaiting trial. See the section ‘Does the criminal justice system deal differently with citizens and non-citizens?’ below for more information Figure 1 It is common to analyse criminal justice data by age, which is a major factor in the likelihood of criminal offending. Foreign nationals are, on average, younger than Brits, and younger people are more likely to be convicted of crimes. The Ministry of Justice would not provide data on cautions and convictions by age, so in this section we look at the prison population. Figure 2 shows the proportion of foreign nationals in the England and Wales prison population, by age, as of June 2024. Compared with the wider population of the same age, non-citizens are underrepresented in prison among 25-44-year-olds, who together comprise just over 60% of the prison population. They are overrepresented among people aged 24 or under and 65 or over. In Scotland, non-citizens are only overrepresented among 55-64-year-olds, while foreign nationals are overrepresented at all age groups in Northern Irish prisons. Figure 2 Note that naturalised citizens (i.e., people who migrated to the UK and later acquired British citizenship) are recorded as British in these statistics. Government crime statistics do not include any information on country of birth. Return to top How do conviction and incarceration rates vary by nationality and immigration status? Conviction statistics vary by nationality. This is to be expected because people from different backgrounds will have different risk factors, such as socio-economic deprivation and witnessing criminal offending during childhood and adolescence. Within the British population, young adults who had been in care were roughly ten times more likely to have been found guilty of an offence than those who had never been in care, according to one study. Looking specifically at nationality, the visa routes into the UK also vary. Work and study routes select people with relatively affluent family backgrounds, where offending rates are lower. Experiences will also vary after arriving in the UK, from labour market opportunities and deprivation to social isolation, which may affect the risk of offending. The non-UK nationalities that received the most cautions and convictions in England and Wales in 2024 were Romanians, Poles, and Albanians (Figure 3). These were three of the four most common non-UK nationalities in English and Welsh prisons on 31 December 2025, alongside Irish citizens. Figure 3 It is difficult to compare conviction rates accurately by nationality, because there are currently no reliable estimates of how many people of each nationality live in the UK. To address this problem, Figure 4 below uses 2021 data, when the Census provides more reliable estimates. Even Census data does not eliminate the problem, because some nationalities may have larger unauthorised populations that are less likely to be included in the Census (and there is some evidence of this in the case of Albania, described below). However, the data illustrate the basic trend of large variation among nationalities. Note that these figures are for non-citizens only, and do not include naturalised citizens or UK-born ethnic minorities. For example, the Census indicated that, as of March 2021, the majority of people born in Afghanistan had become UK citizens. In general, convictions in 2021 tended to be lower among citizens of higher-income regions and higher among citizens of lower-income ones. Among the 50 largest individual nationalities, some were underrepresented in the convictions data, including Indians, Pakistanis, French, and Chinese. Others were overrepresented, such as Albanians, Iraqis, and Afghans. The high representation of Albanian citizens may result in part from the presence of transnational organised crime networks involving people who do not live permanently in the UK and are not included in the population data. Indeed, 61% of Albanian convictions in 2021 were for drug offences, compared to 12% among British citizens and 14% among all foreign nationals. The Albanian embassy has also argued that the actual size of the Albanian population in the UK is much larger than official statistics imply, overstating estimated crime rates. This seems plausible, since even in 2021, administrative birth statistics show that Albanian-born men made up 0.6% of fathers of newborns in England and Wales, despite comprising only 0.3% of men aged 16 to 49 in the Census. While any reasonable estimate would still leave Albania overrepresented in convictions data, it is possible that the true rate is substantially lower. Some non-citizens in the statistics will have lived in the UK for many years, and others will have arrived recently or, in some cases, may not have lived in the UK at all at the time they were arrested. The data also do not show how long people have lived in the UK before their conviction, or even if they were residents at all. Figure 4 Data on other important characteristics are not collected. There is no published data on convicted offenders’ immigration status, such as whether they are an asylum seeker, refugee, family migrant, work migrant or international student. It is likely that conviction rates vary by immigration status, for the same reasons that they vary by nationality – that is, differences in socioeconomic deprivation, education, childhood experiences, mental health, or social networks. Some studies from other countries have also identified impacts of immigration status, for example finding that unauthorised migrants with no right to work were more likely to be convicted of crimes. Several of the nationalities that have high shares of asylum seekers – such as Iranians, Iraqis, and Somalis – were among the top 15 nationalities in the prison population in December 2025 but had relatively small populations living in the UK at the time of the 2021 Census (Figure 3, above). However, the data do not show whether people of these nationalities convicted of crimes had previously claimed asylum, had a different immigration status, or no status at all. On the other hand, we typically see lower-than-average conviction rates in nationalities where high shares come on work and study visa routes, which are generally restricted to comparatively wealthy migrants – examples include China, India, and the Philippines. The data also do not show how long people have lived in the UK before their conviction. Some will have lived in the UK for many years, and others will have arrived recently or, in some cases, may not have lived in the UK at all (and were only visiting) at the time they were arrested. Return to top Are British and non-British citizens convicted for different types of offences? Non-citizens are overrepresented among people cautioned, convicted or incarcerated for drug and fraud offences, but underrepresented for violent offences. The picture is more complicated for sexual offences and theft, where foreign nationals’ share of the prison population is lower than their share of convictions. Since these offence categories group together a wide range of offences – ranging from relatively minor offences to very serious offences – it is not possible to say why conviction and incarceration rates differ. Figure 5 compares the non-citizen proportion of cautions/convictions and the prison population in each year. Figure 5 Among the sentenced prison population, British and foreign nationals were given broadly similar sentences (Figure 6). However, a significantly lower share of non-citizens were in prison after being recalled for breaching the conditions of their licence. This likely owes to the fact that some are returned from the UK during or immediately after their sentence and are not released on licence. Figure 6 Return to top Does the criminal justice system deal differently with citizens and non-citizens? Whether a person is a citizen affects what happens to them in the criminal justice system. For example, non-citizens comprise a considerably larger proportion of the remand prison population (i.e., people in prison while awaiting trial or sentencing) than the sentenced population (Figure 7). This suggests that non-citizens are much less likely to be granted bail while awaiting trial. The picture is similar in Scotland and Northern Ireland (see Figure 6, above). Figure 7 Research from academics and charitable organisations has argued that courts perceive foreign nationals as posing a greater risk of absconding, and that more limited information on offence history makes it difficult for probation staff to assess their risk of reoffending while awaiting trial. Advocacy group Justice UK collected data on remand decision-making from 742 hearings in magistrates’ courts between January 2020 and December 2022 and found that foreign nationals were 46% more likely than UK nationals not to be given bail. After conviction, non-citizens are often allocated to different prisons. Three prisons in England and Wales are exclusively used for foreign national offenders (FNOs), collectively holding 1,400 prisoners as of December 2024. FNOs cannot move into open (category D) prisons or be released on temporary license as easily as citizens, unless the Home Office has confirmed they have no plans to deport them. In 2024, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in England and Wales (HMCIP) found that a lack of interpreting services for people with limited English language led to isolation and that limited contact with immigration enforcement staff made it harder to clarify their immigration status. In its most recent inspections, conducted in 2023, HMCIP found that none of the FNO-only prisons offered accredited programmes to change behaviours that contribute to offending. One possible reason why rehabilitation services were withdrawn in FNO-only prisons is that the government expects to return non-citizens to their home countries. In 2015, prisons were permitted to focus resources on services deemed more appropriate to those facing removal. Not all FNOs are removed after their sentence, however – as the next section describes. Return to top Does the government deport non-citizens after their sentences? In theory, UK law says the government must deport foreign national offenders (FNOs) sentenced to 12 months or more in prison (and, as of March 2026, FNOs with a suspended sentence of 12 months or more) unless they have a successful human rights or other appeal against removal, or removal is not possible for practical reasons (e.g. the country of origin does not accept returns) (Figure 8). People with shorter sentences can be deported where the government deems it beneficial for the UK (they are known as ‘non-criteria FNOs’). FNOs can be returned during their sentence or afterwards. See ‘Understanding the Policy’ for more information. Figure 8 The government does not publish data on either the proportion of FNOs removed or the status of those removed. However, available figures show that the number of FNO removals declined between 2017 and 2021. The Home Office has attributed this fall to several factors, including a 2017 Supreme Court judgement that prevented FNOs from being returned before appeals had been reviewed by the courts, a 2019 legal challenge that led to charter flights being suspended, and removal restrictions implemented during the pandemic. After the pandemic, returns of non-citizen offenders gradually rose, reaching 5,850 by the year ending March 2026. Figure 9 One indication that FNO removals may not have kept pace with prison releases is that the number of deportable offenders living in the community has risen (i.e., people who were neither in prison nor immigration detention, and had not been granted the right to remain in the UK long term on human rights or other grounds) (Figure 10). The size of this group grew by 36% from the end of 2022 to March 2026, equivalent to 1,600 people per year. In mid-2022, when the data were last published, a majority of FNOs living in the community had finished their sentence at least 2 years earlier. Non-citizens who are liable for deportation but have not been removed are not permitted to work, study or claim benefits. However, in certain circumstances, FNOs in the community are provided with accommodation – for example, if they are assessed as being at high risk of reoffending and have nowhere suitable to live. They may also be eligible for accommodation ahead of deportation following a refused asylum claim. According to Home Office data, obtained via a freedom of information request, 929 FNOs were in asylum accommodation from the government after a refused asylum claim as of March 2026. Some non-citizen offenders are also held in immigration detention – there are no published figures on how many, but in March 2025, 1,800 people were in detention, including non-FNOs. Figure 10 The likelihood that people will be deported after release from prison appears to vary by nationality but, again, the statistics are poor. In 2025, 27% of people returned were Albanian citizens, while a further 18% and 8% were Romanian and Polish nationals, respectively. These were three of the four most common non-UK nationalities in the prison population on 31 December 2025. However, some nationalities with significant representation in the prison population have very small numbers of deportations, such as Iran (10 FNO returns in 2025) and Somalia (14 FNO returns). This likely reflects low removals of any kind (including non-offenders) to certain countries, particularly those with poorly functioning governments or bad diplomatic relations with the UK. Return to top How do human rights laws affect deportations? Legal challenges sometimes mean the government does not remove offenders from the UK. In some cases, this is because non-citizens who challenge their removal on human rights grounds are granted legal status to remain. In other cases, legal challenges are unsuccessful but delay removal. Between 2015 and 2022, an average of 1,260 FNOs per year lodged an appeal against removal. Most were unsuccessful: 420 FNOs (33%) successfully appealed each year, on average, with roughly 180 appeals per year (14%) successful on human rights grounds only (Figure 11). This includes Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which enshrines the right to family and private life, and Article 3, which prohibits torture and degrading treatment. Many of the successful challenges that are not on human rights grounds will be EU citizens challenging removal under EU law (before 2021) or the EU Withdrawal Agreement. Figure 11 More detailed figures are available on legal challenges by non-citizen offenders who had been detained ahead of removal for the 2017 to 2019 period. This analysis found that FNOs either raised a legal challenge or physically disrupted their return in 26% of instances of detention, most often an appeal against previous immigration decisions (226 per year), judicial reviews (134/year), medical reports stating that continued detention may harm the FNO detainee’s health (75), or asylum claims (62). These legal challenges usually led to release from detention while their case was being considered, but in most cases, the challenges were not ultimately successful – 24% of appeals were allowed (excluding those that had not had a decision at the time the report was published in 2021). Return to top How many non-citizen offenders take up early release or financial incentives to leave the UK? Non-citizen offenders can be returned before the end of their custodial sentence, even if they would not normally be eligible for release based on the amount of time served, in order to reduce costs and free up prison capacity. The most common schemes for such releases are the Early Removal Scheme (ERS), where prisoners are removed before their scheduled release date, and the Facilitated Returns Scheme (FRS), which offers financial incentives to people who are willing to leave voluntarily. Between January 2016 and June 2022, a little under 1,800 FNOs were removed under the ERS each year, on average, and 540 were removed under the FRS, representing 38% and 11% of FNO returns over the same period, respectively. (Note that some individuals were removed under both schemes, so these percentages cannot be added.) The number of foreign-national offenders removed through the ERS increased between 2022 and 2025 (Figure 12). Over this period, the government reduced the minimum sentence FNOs must serve before they become eligible for removal under the ERS. This may have increased the incentive to take up the scheme (see ‘Understanding the Policy’ for more information). Returns made via the FRS increased in 2021 after EEA nationals were made eligible for the scheme, although they remained lower than during the early 2010s, when payments were higher. FRS return figures are not available after June 2022. Figure 12 In theory, non-citizens can be transferred to another country to serve the rest of their sentence there, instead of in the UK, via ‘prison transfer agreements’ (PTAs). In practice, these agreements are relatively rare. According to Ministry of Justice data obtained via FOI request, an average of 68 FNOs were removed under PTAs each year between 2010 and 2024. Return to top Are migrants more or less likely to be victims of crime? Crime survey data give us estimates of whether people believe they have been victims of crime, regardless of whether they reported the crime to the police. Figure 13 estimates the likelihood that a person with average characteristics (e.g., average age, education, household income, etc.) was the victim of a crime in the years 2016/17 to 2023/24 (excluding the pandemic), depending on their country of birth. Overall, victimisation rates were lower among the non-UK-born for key offence categories, although they were marginally more likely to be victims of hate crimes. Earlier analysis from the Migration Advisory Committee (2018) for the period 2011/12 to 2016/17 produced similar results. One possible explanation is that migrants are more likely to avoid high-crime areas or unsafe activities. Another potential explanation relates to the survey itself. The ONS does not interview people living in communal establishments, which includes asylum seekers in hotels and international students in university halls, and response rates are lower among recent arrivals. Note that the estimates in Figure 13 do not take into account how many times an individual was the victim of a crime, nor the severity of the offence. Figure 13 After controlling for other characteristics, foreign-born victims were more likely than UK-born victims to report incidents of violent crime to the police, but less likely to report other types of crime (Figure 14). Comparing the reasons why UK and non-UK victims did not report incidents (of any kind) to the police, EU-born victims more often gave reasons which suggest a lack of confidence in the police (e.g., police would not have been interested), while both EU and non-EU victims were more likely to say that reporting the incident would have been inconvenient. They were less likely than the UK-born to say they didn’t report an incident because there was no loss or damage. Figure 14 Return to top How many British citizens are foreign national offenders in other countries? In 2024, consular staff at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) assisted in 4,580 new arrest and detention cases involving British nationals overseas (Figure 15). Around 900 of these cases were in Spain, with the US (700) and the UAE (250) the next most common countries. The FCDO does not publish details on the offences committed or the sentences received by British citizens who receive assistance. However, Prisoners Abroad, a charity that assists Brits in overseas prisons, notes that 4% of their clients in the year ending June 2025 had sentences of under one year, while 52% had sentences of 10 years or longer. Around 40% of the Brits they assisted had been imprisoned for drug offences, and 14% were imprisoned for sexual offences or murder. These figures refer to both new cases and older ones. Figure 15 Evidence gaps and limitations While administrative data at several stages of the criminal justice process include the individual’s nationality, they do not typically record the person’s immigration status or length of residence in the UK. As a result, it is unclear how many foreign nationals in criminal proceedings are non-residents, such as tourists, and how many originally arrived through different visa categories or unauthorised routes. Convictions data for non-citizens are currently only available via Freedom of Information request and are not consistently available. They also provide limited detail, grouping offences into broad categories that combine relatively minor and more serious offences. The issue of ‘grooming gangs’ – or ‘Group-based child sexual exploitation’ – is not discussed in this briefing for this reason – there are no usable figures on the number and context of offences committed, or on the citizenship or country of birth of offenders. UK population estimates are highly uncertain, and they either underestimate or exclude certain groups (e.g., short-term migrants or unauthorised migrants). This makes it difficult to compare the share of foreign nationals in the criminal justice system to the share of foreign nationals in the wider population. Data is collected on individuals who are convicted, but it does not include all crimes committed. Therefore, simply comparing citizen and non-citizen populations can be misleading. A series of factors might lead to non-citizens having higher or lower conviction rates than Brits, even if they commit crimes at the same rates. For instance, migrants may commit crimes that are easier (or harder) to detect, or courts could be more (or less) likely to convict migrants. It is unclear how many non-citizen prisoners are remanded in custody but later acquitted. Ministry of Justice data from 2024 for England and Wales indicates that 9% of defendants remanded into custody at magistrates’ courts, and 14% at Crown Courts, were not convicted. It does not collect this information by the defendant’s nationality. Acknowledgements Thanks to Guy Dampier, Nick Hammond, Alan Manning, Rupinder Pahar, and Jon Simmons for comments on an earlier draft. Any errors are the responsibility of the author. Studies cited in Table 1 Bell, B., Fasani, F. and Machin, S. (2013) “Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 95 (4). pp. 1278-1290. Available online. Fasani, F., Mastrobuoni, G., Owens, E. and Pinotti, P. (2019) “Immigration and Crime in the United Kingdom.” Does Immigration Increase Crime?. Available online. Jaitman, L. and Machin, S. (2013) “Crime and Immigration: new evidence from England and Wales.” IZA Journal of Migration, 19 (2). Available online. Migration Advisory Committee (2018) “EEA migration in the UK.” Available online. Author Ben Brindle Download Briefing Press Contact If you would like to make a press enquiry, please contact: Rob McNeil + 44 (0)7500 970081 robert.mcneil@compas.ox.ac.uk Contact Us General Enquiries T: +44 (0) 1865 612 375 E: migrationobservatory@compas.ox.ac.uk Press Enquiries T: +44 (0)7500 970 081 E: robert.mcneil@compas.ox.ac.uk Newsletter sign up Follow us on twitter Like us on facebook Watch us on vimeo Connections This Migration Observatory is kindly supported by the following organisations. Accessibility Feedback Privacy Policy & Cookies The Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society) University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS © 2026 The Migration Observatory Website by REDBOT To provide the best possible experience, this website uses cookies. By clicking 'Accept All' you accept our use of cookies. 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