Expel foreign crooks? No, we’re far too nice

Tom Stacey, a prison visitor for 30 years, says that jails devote scandalous resources to ‘diversity’. No wonder the Home Office has so little time to manage deportations

Political defenders of Charles Clarke insist it’s unreasonable to expect ministers to be acquainted with ‘every nook and cranny’ of the department they are responsible for, especially one as cumbrous as his. It’s hardly his fault, they say, that 1,023 foreign prisoners were freed without being considered for deportation.

And true enough that the Home Secretary cannot be familiar with everything that’s going on. He’s only human. One aspect of the Prison Service that he may not be familiar with is the earnest, not to say saintly, work done by governors and warders to ensure that foreign criminals leave prison feeling thoroughly at home there, not despite their foreignness but because of it.

Forget deportation. The large London penitentiary where I have been a prison visitor for three decades has established, at New Labour’s behest, an elite team of warders and probation officers who, in their own words as displayed on notices all over the prison, are ‘passionate about Diversity and Equality’.

These officials make up the ‘Diversity Team’, and most of the 130 or so penal establishments in England and Wales have set up their equally devoted teams, all committed to making our foreign national offenders snug and valued in Blighty, at least for the time being. The Diversity Teams are naturally proud of their role in life, which they describe in laminated notices wherever there is space on the prison’s walls. The Diversity Team’s notice in my prison is worth quoting in full:

‘Our aim,’ it announces to all who can read English, ‘is to provide information, advice, support and guidance to the senior management team, staff and prisoners, thus ensuring HM Prison –— provides an effective professional and responsible service in this area.