Facilitated Returns Scheme

Under the Facilitated Returns Scheme, foreign criminals in British jails are being offered £1,500 each in cash if they agree to go home part of the way through their sentences.

When they leave, they receive a cash card loaded with £500.

A further £1,000 of British taxpayers’ cash is payable within the first three months of their arrival home.

The card is programmed to work in ATM machines around the world.

The offer is even available to criminals who have served their entire sentence in Britain – at a cost of £45,000 a year.

They will get a cash payment of £750.

In opposition, the Tories said the scheme was ‘simply outrageous’. Dominic Grieve, then Conservative justice spokesman, said: ‘The lesson is clear: under Labour, crime pays and the taxpayer foots the bill.’

Now the Coalition says the scheme will save money, because it is cheaper than forcibly removing foreign criminals or leaving them in jail.

Once the criminals return home they have to make a claim that they need cash for rent, private healthcare or help to establish a business before they can obtain the £1,000.

Officials have struggled for years to deport foreign convicts and more than 11,000 are currently taking up space in Britain’s packed jails.

illegally immigrate
commit petty crime and hide your earnings somewhere until you are caught, say you spent it all
get a short term prison sentence in a prison with satellite TV, internet access, a pool and gymnasium
when your sentence is over paid £1500 to leave
pick up your hidden earnings and leave
repeat the process

Here is another take on the bill: If foreign prisoners accutally do stay home, they'll be spending the money in OTHER COUNTRIES, that money wouldn't come back to Great Britain as a whole, it would most likely stay there in whatever country it was in. Great Britain would be losing economic value.

>>3
Yes, but we're talking peanuts compared with the expense of keeping someone in jail or paying them welfare because they're extremely unlikely to work. We're talking about essentially selling the problem, extremely cheaply, to whatever country they came from.

If the cost is significantly lower than deporting them by force then it works for me.

We're going to get some div posting about the Human Rights Act eventually so I might as well come to its defense. The HRA is your friend. It's a rare example of how our un-codified UK constitution recognizes our rights. Deal with it.

Q. What does HRA have to do with this?
Ans. The reason it is expensive to deport people against their will is because it's often to countries where they may be tortured etc, and brings expensive lawyering under the HRA. "Don't hate the player (criminal) hate the game (the law society)" for why this is so.

It is true to say that if prison sentences were longer and more of a deterrent you wouldn't have to pay people to waive their rights and go back to Tortureland. But morally and legally you couldn't make Jonny Foreigner's sentences longer and more unpleasant than Joe Native so you'd have to settle for blanket higher sentences and end up paying more.

This scheme doesn't sound pretty but it is pragmatic.