Dangerous foreign national offenders are being freed from a Kent prison without adequate public protection measures in place because of persistent delays in Home Office deportation decisions, the chief inspector of prisons has found.
Charlie Taylor’s report into HMP Maidstone — a category C facility housing 526 inmates, almost all of whom are foreign national offenders awaiting deportation or considered too dangerous for community release — found that late Home Office decisions were leaving prison staff with insufficient time to make proper discharge arrangements.
Under existing rules, prisoners must receive at least 30 days’ notice ahead of release or a decision on their immigration status. The inspection found only a third of inmates were receiving that notification within the required timeframe. In some cases, prisoners were informed just days before they were due to be freed, forcing staff to hastily assemble housing arrangements, travel documents and removal plans — often with the work still incomplete when inmates walked out.
Taylor said the problem was directly driven by “late Home Office deportation” decisions, which he said undermined “effective planning” across the board. The inspectorate warned that the cumulative effect of these failures risked offenders who should have been deported being released into British communities instead. Many inmates were themselves unclear whether they would face removal or be freed at the end of their sentence, adding to uncertainty within the prison.
The report pointed to wider coordination failures between the prison service and the Home Office as the root cause, and its findings arrive at a time of broader concern about errors in the justice system, including a number of high-profile mistaken releases in recent months.
The inspection findings coincide with the introduction of significant sentencing reforms that came into effect on 23 March, under which custodial sentences of under 12 months have effectively been abolished for most offences. Magistrates are now required to avoid short jail terms except in exceptional circumstances, such as cases involving public safety. In their place, suspended sentences will be used as the default. Judges have also been given the power to suspend sentences of up to three years, extended from the previous two-year ceiling.
The changes apply only to offenders convicted after 23 March and are intended to ease chronic overcrowding in the prison estate. As of June 2025, foreign nationals accounted for 10,772 of the prison population in England and Wales — approximately 12 per cent of the total.
