Around 200 Albanian nationals serving sentences in overcrowded prisons in England and Wales will be sent back to Tirana to serve the rest of their sentences in their home country.
The MoJ said the funding would not be paid up front but on a results basis and it is understood this is designed to ensure convicts serve out their full sentence and are not released early.
‘Will Save Taxpayers Money’
On Wednesday Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said: “Today we announced a new partnership with Albania that will return 200 foreign national offenders to their home country. This landmark package will speed up removals and save the taxpayer money while improving Albanian prisons.”The cost of housing prisoners in Albania is around a third of the cost of housing an inmate in England or Wales.
The MoJ said the deal would “free up” space in prisons in England and Wales and double the number of offenders without UK citizenship removed annually.
Around 14 percent of the foreign nationals in English and Welsh prisons are Albanians, making them the biggest contingent.
Earlier this week justice minister Lord Bellamy, KC, told Parliament jails were at 99 percent capacity and getting “quite tight.”
Albanians to Serve Sentences ‘Near Their Families’
The Albanian justice minister, Ulsi Manja, said: “At its core, every Albanian convict in the United Kingdom shall be given the opportunity to serve the remaining sentence in Albania, near their families, while we also increase our efforts to ensure the modernisation of the Albanian penitentiary system.”The MoJ said the Albanian deal would cost them £8 million over two years, equating to £32 per prisoner per day, compared to £109 per day to house them in prisons in England and Wales.
Under the act, the UK has to sign a separate Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with each country’s government.
Between April 27, 2021 and April 27, 2023, the government repatriated 112 inmates under PTAs.
In 2007 Hansard listed all the countries which Britain had a PTA with and it included Albania, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Nicaragua, Thailand, Ukraine, Hong Kong, and the United States.
The most notable omissions were Russia, Iran, and China.
In 2006, Billa shot dead a fellow Albanian, Prel Marku, at a social club in Park Royal, west London.
He fled to Denmark but was extradited and in 2008 he was convicted and jailed for life with the judge stipulating he should serve at least 34 years in prison, meaning he was not eligible for release until 2042.
Billa was sent back to Albania to serve the rest of his sentence, but in February 2019 he was released by a judge.
The following year Billa, by then 40, was shot dead at the office of his car rental business in Tirana, Albania.