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.

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.