Hunt For 900 Dangerous Criminals Freed In Error (UK)

More than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals, including killers, rapists and child abusers, have been freed from prison without being considered for deportation and hundreds are missing, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, admitted yesterday.

All of the prisoners had committed crimes that should have triggered automatic assessment for removal from the country and the majority should have expected to be expelled.

About 160 were released without being considered for removal despite explicit recommendations by judges that they should be deported at the end of their sentences.

Such is the chaos in the system for dealing with "foreign national prisoners" that Home Office officials were unable to say last night whether they had found three foreign murderers - who should be on life-long licence - nine rapists and five paedophiles among the 1,023 prisoners released since 1999.

Mr Clarke said he regretted the fiasco, which also involved his department giving "misleading" information to MPs.

"I take responsibility for it," he said. "It is a shocking state of affairs. We are taking it extremely seriously but I don't think this is a resignation matter."

The Home Office is still not sure what offences 103 of the prisoners were jailed for and says it does not know how many have re-offended since being freed.

Senior police officers believe that cases of serious re-offending will almost certainly emerge when details of the missing criminals are given to them to check against their records.

Only 107 of the 1,023 have been found and considered for deportation, leaving 916 outstanding, although Home Office sources claimed that they knew where some of them were. Twenty of the 107 have been deported. The Home Office has refused to identify any of the criminals.

No 10 admitted that Tony Blair was "annoyed" but had decided against demanding ministerial resignations.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman defended the decision of Mr Clarke and Tony McNulty, a Home Office minister, not to resign over a problem caused by "communications failure" and not a policy decision.

It would be "unreasonable to expect ministers to know what is going on in every nook and cranny of their department", it was suggested.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "This astonishing admission is the latest in a long line of failures which have jeopardised the protection of the public.

"How many more times must we put up with the Home Office's abject failure to protect the public and how many more times will they seek to duck responsibility for the issue?"

Mr Clarke suggested that the problem had arisen because the Home Office, the Prison Service and the Immigrant and Nationality Directorate had failed to cope with a huge growth in foreign prisoners in England and Wales: from 4,259 in June 1996 to 10,265 at the end of February this year.

"We simply did not make the proper arrangements for identifying and considering removal in line with the growth in numbers," he said. "It is a failure of the Home Office and its agencies and I do take responsibility. The concern, and possibly anger, that people will feel are entirely justified."

Asked if he thought that all of the prisoners would be recaptured for possible deportation, Mr Clarke said he was "pretty confident" but added: "A large number of people is involved. I can't say hand on heart that we will identify where each one of those is but we are working on that very energetically."

There was no clear explanation of the timing of his announcement, although a member of the Commons public accounts committee, which will sit today, has been pressing for answers and the Home Office faced at least one request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

In addition to the three murderers and two men convicted of manslaughter, five were convicted of committing sex offences against children and seven of sex attacks against adults. Twenty-seven were convicted of indecent assault. Many of the sex-related offenders are on the sex offenders register and should be subject to supervision in the community.

There are 93 robbers, 41 burglars, four kidnappers, more than 100 people with convictions for violence and more than 200 who were jailed for drugs offences.

Home Office data showed that 237 of the foreign criminals were failed asylum seekers and 54 were still having applications considered.

More than 850 had been jailed for more than a year and 13 had been serving terms of more than 10 years.

Of the 160 cases in which deportation was recommended by courts, 14 have been identified, of whom five have been deported and nine considered inappropriate for removal. The prisoners come from 103 nations. Jamaica accounts for 175 and there are 59 Nigerians, 58 Iraqis and 50 from Ireland.

The Home Office now hopes to consider deportation up to 12 months before a prisoner is freed. It disclosed that in 2004 and last year 5,500 foreign prisoners were properly considered for deportation and 3,000 removed. If that ratio held for the missing 1,023, up to 600 would have been thrown out.

Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the public accounts committee whose questions led to the admission, said: "When the Home Office has made such a hideous mistake, you would think they would do everything possible to find them, including enlisting the assistance of the public. That is obviously not possible if they are refusing to say who they are."

David Blunkett, the former home secretary, said: "My view is that heads should roll. There are too many people in the system who simply don't care.

Pinging to you mad ivan, for any local input. Seems to me if the Tories got their act together, they could ride the Law & Order express to power. Based on: IF they got their act together, on the same page, right of the people to be protected from criminals both foreign and domestic, all that right stuff, of course.

Seems to me if the Tories got their act together, they could ride the Law & Order express to power.

You cannot imagine how painful it has been here to have the socialists running amok unchecked while our team just kept on fumbling.

I voted for David Cameron in the Tory leadership contest, with high hopes, but so far he has been a bit wobbly and I have concerns. But this is all a god-send, a golden opportunity for Cameron to get his first socialist scalp. If he screws this one up, I will really despair!

Mind you, we need to go after Jack Straw on this one, too: he was Home Secretary when this lunacy got started.

It can all only damage Blair, but even that has some worries. It may merely hasten the day Brown 'inherits' the premiership, in an attempt by the socialists to claim a 'new broom' is in place; let's just hope the people aren't duped again!

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