Nigel Farage has stated violent UK offenders could possibly be jailed abroad beneath his plans to chop crime by half.
The Reform UK chief named El Salvador as a possible vacation spot, although he stated he has not held conversations with officers there and “multiple” companions could be thought of.
El Salvador is residence to a infamous mega-prison, the Terrorism Confinement Middle (CECOT).
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In a speech on legislation and order on Monday, Mr Farage stated: “It is quite astonishing that to keep a prisoner in a British prison it costs nearly £52,000 a year.
“You might ship a baby Eton for that value.
“So we can send some of our worst violent criminals overseas to serve their terms. If that means Ian Huntley goes to El Salvador. Well, our attitude is ‘so be it’.”
Huntley is serving a life time period for the murders of two 10-year-old women, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002.
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El Salvador is residence to a infamous super-max jail. Pic: Reuters/El Salvadoran authorities
Requested if he had spoken to any members of the El Salvadoran authorities about his plans, Mr Farage stated he had not however “we do know they’re quite happy to take American violent offenders”.
In March, the Trump administration deported greater than 130 alleged Venezuelan gang members to the CECOT whereas the US president has additionally spoken of sending “homegrown criminals” to the tremendous max facility.
Reform UK stated it wished to create 10,000 “dynamic” jail locations general by renting cells in third occasion nations, at a value of £250m per yr. This may contain “multiple partners including El Salvador”, in keeping with a doc outlining the plan in additional element.
It will come alongside a lot of insurance policies geared toward chopping crime by half if Mr Farage’s occasion wins the following election.
The Clacton MP needs to rent one other 30,000 cops, put cease and search in each space the place knife crime is prevalent and implement a zero-tolerance coverage to shoplifting so each offence “however small” is prosecuted.
Mr Farage additionally stated he would free as much as 10,000 extra jail locations by deporting overseas criminals to their nation of origin, saying he has already spoken to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama about this.
He stated he would take again British offenders who’re incarcerated abroad in return but when nations are nonetheless reluctant “we’ll make it very straightforward. We’ll just end travel”.
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Pic: PA
Mr Farage didn’t say how a lot the plans would value or how they’d be funded in his speech, which marks the beginning of a six week “lawless Britain” marketing campaign.
Nonetheless, in response to questions from media he stated the plans would value £17.4bn over a five-year parliament.
He stated the price of crime is way larger than that so “it isn’t really a question of can we afford to do this, it’s really a question of we can’t afford not to do this”.
He insisted he wouldn’t have to lift taxes, saying the cash would come from “huge cuts” to public spending together with axing HS2 and internet zero insurance policies and lowering the scale of the state.
Mr Farage claimed his plans are needed as a result of elements of Britain are going through “nothing short of societal collapse” resulting from spiralling crime charges.
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Sir Keir Starmer has made halving critical violent crime one of many missions of his authorities, however the pledge has been considerably overshadowed by his controversial early jail launch scheme, geared toward releasing up jail capability resulting from overcrowding.
A spokesperson for the prime minister stated he’s already deporting overseas nationwide offenders, including that Mr Farage’s plans are “unfunded and lack detail” and that “we are getting on with it”.
The spokesperson dominated out shifting prisoners abroad, saying the federal government is “focused on investing and fixing prisons here”.
He added: “In the last 14 years we saw only 500 places added to prison estate and since then we have been going further to free up space in our prisons.”
