Official Statistics

Statistics on foreign national offenders and the immigration system

Published 22 April 2025

In recent years, there has been heightened interest from Parliamentarians, the media and members of the public in learning more about the number and type of criminal offences committed by foreign nationals in the UK, and about what happens to foreign national offenders (FNOs) after they have been convicted, and after they have completed their sentences. Historically, the data has not always been available in sufficiently robust and reliable form to answer many of the questions raised.

In recent months, Home Office ministers have therefore tasked the Department’s Analysis and Insight team with assessing what more can be done both to improve the processes for collating and verifying relevant data on the topic of FNOs and their offences, and to establish a more regular means of placing that data into the public domain alongside other Home Office statistics, in the interests of increasing transparency and informing public debate in this important area.  

At present, data on returns of FNOs who are subject to return or removal from the UK comes from Home Office administrative data systems. The Home Office already routinely publishes the number of FNOs detained in prison under immigration powers and the number of FNOs returned by nationality and return destination in the ‘Immigration system statistics’ quarterly release, as well as the number of FNOs living in the community in the quarterly ‘Migration transparency data’.

However, the system used to bring together the detailed data and analysis on foreign nationals subject to deportation or return, such as their convicted crime type, their sentence length and their nationality, currently faces a number of issues which affect the quality of the data held on that system. These need to be addressed before data from that system can be considered of sufficient standard to be extracted for statistical purposes.

The Home Office are working to improve the recording of the detailed data held on FNOs and an upgrade to the management information system is currently underway.  These improvements require significant changes to the data collection and infrastructure which underpins this management information. Once these changes have been completed, our ability to provide accurate extracts and more detailed information will be significantly improved.

By the end of 2025, if this work progresses as planned, the Home Office proposes to publish more detailed statistical reporting on FNOs subject to deportation and those returned to countries outside of the UK. Until these system developments are complete, we will continue to publish the summary information on FNO returns in the quarterly immigration system statistics.  

Further breakdowns of this data, such as statistics on the type of offences committed by FNOs subject to immigration powers, or their nationalities, will be prepared as ‘experimental statistics’ due to them being derived from a redesigned data system. We will need to review the data in the new system, including for any gaps in the recording or transfer of information between the systems where the operational information is currently held.

The publication date of the new statistical report will be pre-announced in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’ once it is known, as occurs for all regular Home Office official statistics.