Chart shows where migrants clogging up UK prisons are from – most from Albania

New analysis of official data suggests as much as one in 50 Albanian migrants to the UK are in prison, amid an overcrowding crisis in British jails.

Telegraph research using Home Office figures suggests more than 1,200 Albanians have been jailed from a migrant population of almost 53,000 living in the UK without UK citizenship.

The outlet put together a table of more than 130 nationalities ranked by the number of prisoners per 10,000 of the population in the UK from their nations.

The Balkan country’s 232.33 prisoners per 10,000 people – or one in 50 – was found to be the highest by this metric, according to the bombshell data.

This was followed by Kosovans, with an imprisonment rate of 150.23 per 10,000, Vietnamese (148.88), Algerians (124.41), Jamaicans (110.77), Eritreans (110.7), Iraqis (104.43) and Somalis (100.37).

The least likely to be put behind bars were Germans, at 4.68 per 10,000 (one in 2,000). This was followed by people from Italy (4.96), India (6.24), Greece (6.36), US (7.27), Sri Lanka (8.17), France (8.64) and China (9.39).

The overall imprisonment rate of foreign nationals is 27 per cent higher than it is among British citizens, with 18.2 inmates per 10,000 migrants compared with 14 per 10,000 for Brits.

The league table was compiled using Ministry of Justice data, which shows there are 10,435 foreign nationals in jails in England and Wales and 76,866 British nationals. Countries that had fewer than 20 people in British jails weren’t included because of the limited sample size.

They then cross-referenced it with ONS 2021 census data, from which they extracted the number of foreign nationals who don’t have a UK passport from each country.

However, some foreign nationals could have been granted citizenship but had not applied for a passport. It also doesn’t take into account illegal migrants.

The 232.33 per 10,000 imprisonment rate for Albanians was calculated based on the census data which showed 68,672 foreign-born Albanians lived in the UK. The 15,860 without a UK passport were excluded leaving around 52,000. With the figures suggesting 1,227 were in jail, it amounts to around two per cent of Albanians.

There are 300 more Albanians in prison than when the census was conducted three years ago, meaning the proportion could be higher than their estimates.

Prison population statistics are logged by nationality rather than where inmates were born. The census asked individuals where they were born and the passports they had, so populations born abroad were excluded if they held a UK passport.

A government spokesman said: “This Government is committed to delivering justice for victims and safer streets for our communities.

“Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation.”

The government recently implemented an early-release scheme to tackle the high levels of overcrowding in British jails, with a record high prison population of 88,521 as of September 6.

At the time, the “usable operational capacity”, which is the number prison facilities can accomodate while taking into account issues including control and security, was 89,619, meaning there was spare capacity of only 1,098 places, BBC News reports.

By 27 September, the population had dropped to 86,526 with 2,886 spare places, but prison services look set to come under further pressure.

The UK prison population had been projected to rise by about 17,000 by 2028 at current raise, while capacity is only expected to rise by around 9,000.

Alongside the early release scheme, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said his government would also change planning laws in England and Wales to allow prisons to be built more quickly and that Labour was “already (trying) to move forward some of the projects in play”.