Revealed: crime burden on the rise
Updated on 28 January 2008
New figures unearthed by Channel 4 News online show a huge increase in foreign arrestees throughout the UK.
Police forces throughout Britain are at "bursting point" as they struggle to cope with an influx of migrants, it was claimed today.
In some areas the number of foreigners being arrested has more than doubled in recent years, creating a huge extra workload for frontline officers.
Government has been accused of failing to provide the funding to match its migration policy, amid spiralling translation and bureaucratic costs - a claim it refutes.
'Police forces have legitimate complaints - no-one is getting the funding representative of the changes that are going on'Danny Sriskandarajah, Institute for Public Policy Research
New pressures
The issue of a lack of police resources to deal with dramatic population increases caused by migrants was raised by Cambridgeshire chief constable Julie Spence last year.
Chief con Spence said huge change in the make up of the population in the country had brought new pressures.
For example, in the space of one year, drink-drive figures showed a 17-fold rise in arrests among foreigners. Spence's campaign for extra funding will step up a gear when she meets with police minister Tony McNulty next month.
Danny Sriskandarajah, head of migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: "Cambridgeshire has been the first and most vocal police force on this issue but there is no doubt there are grumblings from forces in other parts of the country about there not being enough resources.
"Police forces have legitimate complaints - no-one is getting the funding representative of the changes that are going on.
"This is not about increased criminality among migrants, it is a failure of central government funding."
The latest figures
All 52 forces in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were surveyed by Channel 4 News online. Under Freedom of Information rules, they were asked to provide figures relating to foreign arrestees over the last few years.
A total of 24 forces had systems capable of producing the figures, with the vast majority detailing stark increases in arrests.
All sizes of forces have been experienced foreign arrestee increases. For example:
- Metropolitan Police from 21,398 to 43,789 between 2003 and 2006
- South Yorkshire from 1,715 to 2,611 between 2003 and 2006
- Hertfordshire 1,863 to 3,052 between 2004 and 2007
- Gwent from 14 to 208 between 2003 and 2007
'There has been no additional funding to account for the increased workload which means that the thin blue line is at bursting point'Jan Berry, Police Federation in England and Wales chairman
'No additional funding'
Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation in England and Wales said: "We are aware from many of our 43 federation branch boards that the number of foreign nationals arrested continues to increase year on year.
"Frontline police officers are already chasing their tails with the growing demands on the police service and the constant battle with paperwork and bureaucracy.
"There has been no additional funding to account for the increased workload which means that the thin blue line is at bursting point."
Most recent figures show that the UK's population increased by 350,000 in just 12 months.
Dealing with foreign nationals with a poor command of English creates extra costs in terms of translation and legal services. Translation services in particular are understood to cost local services up to £100m a year.
Longer to process
Paul Green, a former police officer who worked as a custody sergeant in Bristol until 2005, said: "There was a dramatic increase in the number of foreign arrestees during my time there.
"You have to find out names, address and carry out a risk assessment - illness and mental health and so forth.
"That's for everyone, but of course for someone who speaks English it is very quick, for someone who doesn't it is not.
"As soon as there is a prisoner who does not speak English they have to speak via a conference facility or on the language line - so it takes dramatically longer to process.
"Immediately this causes delays throughout the system. And prisoners end up having to be sent elsewhere because there isn't enough room because of the backlog.
"If it's a criminal offence you have to call in a legal interpreter, they are not on every street corner so you have to wait a while for them to arrive. Again it's big delays and extra costs."
Mr Green - who served in the police for 30 years - said government claims of increased funding were untrue.
He added: "We have had an increase in resources which has been swallowed up in bureaucracy and hitting targets.
"You have to dig underneath the government funding boasts - because there was not enough money to do the job in the first place.
"This is a delicate subject, because people wrongly interpret what Julie Spence said as racist, but this is a real cost. For example, the money being spent on interpreters is going up and up and up.
"The cost in the criminal justice system will be going up and up.
"These increases are not reflected by increases in the budget."
Calls for greater funding echo those of local councils, who claim schools and other vital services are struggling under the weight of increased demand and chronic under-funding.
David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "Government estimated that 13,000 people would come from accession countries.
"At least 700,000 have now arrived. Police forces are now providing damning evidence of the strain Labour's shambolic approach has placed on the police and their ability to fight crime."
Relative demands
The government refutes claims that it has not provided the finance to deal with migration, saying its police funding has risen from £6.2bn to £11bn since 1997.
A Home Office spokesman said: "The police funding formula is used to make an assessment of the relative demands placed on each police authority in England and Wales.
"The population of each authority is a key driver within the police funding formula.
"It's vital that we take the social impact of immigration into account. This is why we set up the Migration Impacts Forum, so public services such as the police can help shape our tough points system which will be introduced in around 60 days time.
"The vast majority of foreign nationals entering or living in the UK play by our rules. However, we have made it perfectly clear that we will seek to deport those who are found guilty of committing a serious crime in the UK.
"In 2007 we exceeded the prime minister's target for deportation, removing 4,200 foreign criminals, an 80 per cent increase on the previous year."
