Foreign nationals in prison: Latest numbers and trends
About one in eight prisoners in England and Wales are foreign nationals: a proportion that has remained broadly unchanged in recent years, despite an increase in the overall number of inmates in jail.
Here the PA news agency looks at the latest numbers and trends for foreign offenders in prison, based on data published by the Ministry of Justice.
– How many foreign nationals are in prison?
Some 10,772 foreign nationals were in prison in England and Wales as of June 30 2025, the most recent figure available.
This is up 3% from 10,435 a year earlier and up 16% in the past five years since June 30 2020.
It is the highest June number since current method for reporting the nationality of prisoners began in 2015.
But while the number of foreign nationals has risen in recent years, the overall size of the prison population has also increased.
The total population stood at 87,334 on June 30 of this year, up 10% from 79,514 in June 2020.
While foreign nationals accounted for 12.3% of all prisoners in June 2025, the proportion is up only slightly from 11.7% in 2020.
It is not the highest proportion on record, which is 12.5% in June 2021.
The figure is broadly unchanged on 12.2% a decade ago in June 2015.
– What are the most common nationalities?
Of the 87,334 people in prison as of June 30 this year, 76,181 (87.2%) were British.
The next largest nationality was Albanian (1,193, or 1.4% of the total), followed by Polish (759, 0.9%), Romanian (716, 0.8%), Irish (707, 0.8%) and Lithuanian (339, 0.4%).
These were followed by Jamaican (338, 0.4%); Indian (320, 0.4%); Pakistani (317, 0.4%); Portuguese (297, 0.3%) and Iraqi (287, 0.3%).
There were 381 prisoners where no nationality was recorded.
– Has the mix of nationalities changed over time?
Polish was the most common overseas nationality among foreign prisoners each year from 2015 to 2018, before slipping to second place in 2019 behind Albanian.
The top two foreign nationalities, Albanian and Polish, have remained the same since 2019.
Albanian has climbed from the sixth most common foreign nationality in 2015 to fifth in 2016, third in 2017, second in 2018 and first in 2019.
Irish has moved in the opposite direction, dropping from second in 2015 to third in 2018 and fourth in 2019, where it remains.
Jamaican has fallen from third place to sixth over the decade, while Romanian has climbed slightly from fourth to third.
Eight of the top 10 foreign nationalities in June 2015 were still in the top 10 in June 2025: Albanian, Indian, Irish, Jamaican, Lithuanian, Pakistani, Polish and Romanian.
The two exceptions are Nigerian and Somalian, who have been replaced in the top 10 by Iraqi and Portuguese.
– Does the proportion of foreign nationals in prison vary by offence?
Yes.
While 12.3% of all prisoners in England and Wales in June 2025 were foreign nationals, the proportion is lower among those serving time for violence against the person (10.5%) or for sexual offences (10.6%), and higher for possession of weapons (11.5%) or for drug offences (19.7%).
– Which prisons have the highest proportion of foreign nationals?
Excluding those prisons that are specifically for foreign offenders – Huntercombe in Oxfordshire, Morton Hall in Lincolnshire and Maidstone in Kent – Wandsworth prison in south London had the highest proportion of inmates of non-British nationality in June 2025 (44.8%).
This is followed by Wormwood Scrubs in west London (35.7%), Belmarsh in south-east London (30.0%) and Pentonville in north London (27.4%).
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