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A new agreement seeing a greater number of Albanian prisoners transferred from the UK has been signed.

A new agreement seeing a greater number of Albanian prisoners transferred from the UK to complete their sentences in Albania has been signed.
The agreement, signed by Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt and the Albanian Deputy Justice Minister, Brikena Kasmi , is the first to be signed with a country with a large number of foreign national offenders in UK prisons. It will see the compulsory transfer of Albanian national prisoners currently serving sentences in the United Kingdom, to prisons in Albania.
The agreement also means that British citizens who are serving prison sentences in Albania may also be compulsorily transferred back to the UK.
There are currently around 180 Albanian prisoners in UK prisons, of whom over 100 may be eligible for transfer under the CPTA.
Signing the agreements, Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt, said:
‘We are already removing thousands of foreign criminals at the end of their sentence, or under transfer agreements to serve the rest of their sentence back home. We believe that, wherever possible, foreign national prisoners should serve their sentences in their own country.
‘I hope this compulsory prisoner transfer agreement will be the first of many arrangements to free up prison spaces and reduce the burden to taxpayers of foreign criminals who should rightly become the responsibility of their own country and not the UK.’