JAMES SLACK
UK Daily Mail
Monday, April 14, 2008
One in every five murders or manslaughters in England and Wales is committed by a foreigner, police figures revealed.
In one area of London, the figure is one in three.
This is despite the fact that foreigners represent only around one in 16 of the general population.
The statistics are so alarming that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will hold a migrant crime summit on Thursday amid worries that police are struggling to cope.
According to figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, the 96 foreign nationals convicted of homicide last year were from 28 different countries.
They were involved in 21 per cent of the total of 461 murder and manslaughter cases.
Critics blame the Government's failure to deport foreign criminals. Recent cases have involved foreigners who had already been convicted of robbery and assault but were allowed to remain after serving their sentences.
Conservative MP David Davies, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "These extraordinary figures demonstrate the failure of the Government's immigration policy, which has seen all sorts of undesirable characters being able to get into this country and use the Human Rights Act to escape deportation."
The figures show a wide variation between areas. In London, as many as 76 out of 231 identified killers were foreign nationals.