The number of Albanian criminals in British prisons has increased fourfold since 2013, to the point where they now account for the largest group of foreigners in the estate.
Criminals from the Balkan country — Europe’s only Muslim-majority state, besides the only partially-recognised Republic of Kosovo — make up a full tenth of all foreign national offenders behind bars in England and Wales, despite measures which are supposed to see them transferred to Albanian prisons.
This arrangement was advertised as having the potential to save Britsh taxpayers tens of millions of pounds, but The Times has revealed that only 24 of 77 Albanians recommended for transfer were actually removed to prisons in their home country in 2019.
The Ministry of Justice said in a statement that “Any foreign national who comes to our country and abuses our hospitality by breaking the law should be in no doubt of our determination to punish and deport them” — but, as with illegal aliens who cross the English Channel in boats, the rhetoric does not match the reality in the vast majority of cases.
“The importation of Albanian criminals into the UK over the last ten years has been one of the scandals of the decade,” said Conservative MP Philip Hollobone in remarkably frank comments quoted by The Times.
“In spite of having a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement only a pitifully small number of Albanian criminals have been returned home. The government needs to address this problem urgently,” he added.
The overrepresentation of Albanian nationals among the prison population in Britain — and among criminals in Europe more generally — is made more remarkable by the fact that the tiny country has a total population of under three million.
Albanians are said to have “established a high-profile influence within UK organised crime” by the National Crime Agency (NCA) — roughly equivalent to the FBI in the United States — with particular prominence in the illegal drugs scene due to “direct relationships with cocaine suppliers in Latin America”.
Their primary base of operations is the multicultural capital city of London, led by Labour’s Sadiq Khan.