CONVICTED criminals including violent thugs are being freed from jail to be deported then returning to Scotland – creating a ‘revolving door’ of foreign offenders.
Prisoners from overseas can be released after serving half of their sentences if they are earmarked to be sent back to their homelands.
But the scheme has been abused, with some offenders coming back to the UK and then being locked up to serve the rest of their original terms.
It comes amid concern over criminals from other countries contributing to overcrowding which has led to the early release of hundreds to free up space.
Last night Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘Law-abiding people across the UK will be outraged at repeat foreign offenders being housed in our already overcrowded jails.
‘With the SNP’s billion-pound replacement for Barlinnie prison in Glasgow still years away and Labour also being soft on crime, this revolving door situation cannot continue.’
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) said nine foreign criminals were sent back to Scottish jails after having been let out for deportation in the past ten years.
It emerged in January that more than £1million of public cash had been handed to illegal immigrants in Scotland, including dangerous criminals, so they can fight deportation.
The Mail previously revealed more than 630 people served with deportation orders after being convicted for crimes including sexual assault and violence had not been removed by the Home Office.
The number of foreign criminals at large in the UK rocketed over the past year from 11,940 to 17,428 – a record high. The number in Scotland stands at 635.
An Albanian criminal who was deported after serving a prison sentence for burglary successfully won the right to remain in the UK – after sneaking back into the country in defiance of a deportation order.
Ardit Binaj, 32, was deported after serving just six months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence for burglary under a prisoner transfer agreement with Albania.
He illegally entered the UK in 2014 and was arrested for burglary the following year. He was sentenced to 30 months, in addition to a six-month sentence for another burglary and 18 weeks for a separate theft.
During Binaj’s initial appeal hearing, he claimed he had sought early release to return to Albania to care for his ill grandmother, who later passed away.
The judge rejected this, concluding he had returned to avoid serving his full sentence.
In another case, an Albanian burglar who claimed asylum to avoid deportation taunted
British taxpayers and the Home Office by filming himself cruising around London in a £300,000 Rolls-Royce Cullinan.
Gucci-wearing Dorian Puka, 28, has previously been jailed and deported twice for a string of burglaries in the UK.
Last year it emerged the Scottish Government was in talks with UK ministers over the deportation of criminals to serve sentences in their home countries to ease overcrowding.
As of last October, there were 629 foreign nationals in Scotland’s jails, 325 of whom had been convicted of a crime.
Last November, an academic claimed Scottish jails resemble a ‘mini UN conference’.
Jim Watson, a criminal justice lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland, told the Daily Telegraph that during a visit to HMP Barlinnie he had met inmates from all over the world.
An SPS spokesman said: ‘We have been managing a rising and extremely complex population for more than a year now.’
The Scottish Government said ‘deportation is a matter for the UK Government’.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Since the election we’ve removed 4,436 foreign criminals, a 14 per cent increase on (the year before).’