Muammar Al Khadafi

According to the Ministry of Justice, the prison population in England and Wales has hit a record high, with 85,578 in prison on Friday of this week.

The figure beats the previous record, 85,395 which was set in October of 2010.

All told, the prison system in England and Wales has the capacity to deal with 88,073 prisoners at any one time. The average cost per prisoner is £47,000 per year according to figures published by the BBC in March 2011.

With that cost and prison populations fast approaching full capacity it is no wonder that Ken Clarke, Justice Secretary, has been looking hard at way to reduce the numbers of people going to prison/how long a sentence they serve.

Never mind the law abiding British public of course, they can deal with increasing crime rates, prisoners released earlier than normal or serving shorter sentences, and a perfect storm that will see cutbacks to police services meaning less bobbies on the beat.

However ConDem reduce prison populations we'll be the ones who suffer, it's inevitable.

What is really interesting, and thanks to TheyWorkForYou.com for recording all this, is a recent exchange from 28 June in the House of Commons which touches upon the subject of prison populations and the origins of prisoners.

James Grey, Conservative, North Wiltshire - "It is laudable that the total number of foreign nationals in prison has gone down since Labour left office from 11,000 to 10,000, but does the Minister agree that that is 10,000 too many? Is it not time we sent the whole lot of them home?"

Nick Herbert, Minister of State, Justice, Arundel and South Downs, Conservative - "....we want to make greater progress and that is why we have set out provisions in the sentencing Bill on, for example, conditional cautions, which will be available as an alternative disposal to remove foreign national prisoners in some circumstances if they agree not to return for a period of time. The question of whether foreign national prisoners could serve their sentences abroad relies on the consent of other countries. We are attempting to negotiate more agreements, but even if we no longer need the consent of the offender, we cannot remove them without the consent of the country that receives them."

There's a simple and clear statement there. 10,000 of those prisoners, around 1 in 8, is a foreign prisoner. Any idea why our prisons are overcrowded now?

And, bear in mind, that 10,000 will just be foreign nationals - not including the vast amount of foreigners who have been handed British citizenship thanks to our give away British nationality to nearly anyone who asks policy.

We can easily see that a large percentage of our prison population is occupied by foreign nationals, and we can assume that another large segment is populated by foreigners who have been given UK citizenship.

With prison places running low, and at £47,000 a year to keep them in prison, how much is that costing us overall? You do the maths, and bear in mind that there are more than just the prison costs to count. It's a big burden on many aspects of our finances and our society as a whole.

At a stroke, simply by recovering control of our borders, and by removing insane human rights legislation which means we cannot revoke citizenship/deport someone even if they are a career criminal who ends up in prison again and again, we could go a long way towards reducing the prison population to manageable levels and save the British taxpayer having to bear an enormous burden imposed by foreign criminals.