UK Government: One in Four Serious Criminals is a Foreigner

Daily Mail
October 7, 2013

his has to be a low-ball number - probably doesn't include legal immigrants and 'asylum seekers.'
his has to be a low-ball number – probably doesn’t include legal immigrants and ‘asylum seekers.’

Up to one in four organised criminals targeting Britain is from overseas, according to a damning Government assessment.

Ministers believe they include at least 7,400 so-called ‘high-harm’ foreign offenders linked to violence, drug-dealing and fraud.

They want to redouble efforts to throw foreign criminals out of the country under measures that will see immigration officers at every police station.

Home Secretary Theresa May will today announce plans to expand a London scheme nationwide to eject thousands more crooks from Britain.

Officials will identify and process foreign suspects as soon as they are arrested, checking whether they are wanted abroad or are here illegally.

Where there is evidence, foreign criminals will be prosecuted, deported and banned from returning for a decade.

Computer records of suspected serious offenders will be marked with a ‘red flag’ to prevent them applying for British nationality while they go through the courts.

New powers will also be used to force criminals to conduct appeals from abroad to prevent them using human rights laws to remain in the UK.

The crackdown comes as the National Crime Agency (NCA), described as Britain’s FBI, is launched today.

The £450million agency will be made up of a 5,000-strong force with sweeping powers to hunt down cyber-criminals, drug barons, paedophile gangs and people-traffickers.

Its director-general, Keith Bristow, said he wanted criminals to ‘fear’ his staff and for the ‘bottom to drop out of their world’ when they realise they are being targeted.

He pledged to untangle unregulated areas of the internet used by criminals and bring to justice those behind the country’s biggest and most dangerous conspiracies.

The agency will use high-tech digital tools and CCTV cameras with face-recognition software to track criminals with greater accuracy and at lower risk.

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