Prison and criminal justice statistics by nationality
Search the latest official prison nationality snapshot for England and Wales. These are people held in custody on one date, not annual crime totals or population crime rates.
Nationality is not ethnicity or immigration route.
A Polish national may be of any ethnicity; a person arriving by a particular route may later hold a different immigration status or citizenship. This table cannot connect those variables.
Looking for the top five by ethnicity?
View the five ethnicity profilesThe Ministry of Justice publishes offence composition for five broad ethnic groups, but not for each individual nationality.
Custody snapshot: 30 June 2026
The total includes sentenced prisoners, remand prisoners and non-criminal detainees.
Top five offence groups for foreign nationals combined
This is the official offence profile for all sentenced foreign nationals held in England and Wales on 30 June 2026. It describes the offence associated with their current custody record - Not crimes committed during a single year and not a breakdown for any one nationality or ethnicity.
6,431sentenced foreign nationals in this combined breakdown
- Violence against the person2,08832.5% of sentenced foreign nationals
- Sexual offences1,37621.4% of sentenced foreign nationals
- Drug offences1,20118.7% of sentenced foreign nationals
- Theft offences4567.1% of sentenced foreign nationals
- Miscellaneous crimes against society3575.6% of sentenced foreign nationals
The search changes the custody-count cards below. Individual-nationality offence breakdowns are not published in this release.
Albanian
9439.3% of foreign nationals in custody · 940 male · 3 female
Irish
6846.7% of foreign nationals in custody · 663 male · 21 female
Polish
6216.1% of foreign nationals in custody · 586 male · 35 female
Romanian
6216.1% of foreign nationals in custody · 596 male · 25 female
Indian
3753.7% of foreign nationals in custody · 362 male · 13 female
Jamaican
3573.5% of foreign nationals in custody · 348 male · 9 female
Afghan
3223.2% of foreign nationals in custody · 321 male · 1 female
Iranian
3103.1% of foreign nationals in custody · 307 male · 3 female
Pakistani
3083.0% of foreign nationals in custody · 304 male · 4 female
Iraqi
3063.0% of foreign nationals in custody · 302 male · 4 female
Portuguese
2682.6% of foreign nationals in custody · 264 male · 4 female
Lithuanian
2562.5% of foreign nationals in custody · 248 male · 8 female
Nigerian
2462.4% of foreign nationals in custody · 240 male · 6 female
Somalian
2352.3% of foreign nationals in custody · 232 male · 3 female
Sudanese
2292.3% of foreign nationals in custody · 229 male · 0 female
The denominator above is foreign nationals in custody, not the resident population of that nationality. It therefore cannot be used as a nationality-specific offending rate.
Download the complete official tablesCustody status matters
Only the sentenced group can be described as serving a sentence. Remand can include people awaiting trial or sentence; the non-criminal group is held for non-criminal reasons.
Why there is no “crime rate by nationality” here
The prison table is a stock count on one day. It mixes offence years and sentence lengths, excludes most community sentences and has no matched resident or visitor denominator. Dividing it by nationality population estimates would create a misleading rate.
Understand foreign national offender statisticsRelated crime and demographic evidence
Each page uses a different population, reference period and statistical unit. Keep those definitions attached when moving between them.