Reform UK in talks with El Salvador to deport all migrant criminals to nation's notoriously tough jails

Party chairman Lee Anderson will lead a delegation to central America within months for talks with Nayib Bukele's Government on whether a scheme could work.

Donald Trump ally Mr Bukele, 45, has hauled his country from chaos to prosperity, in part due to locking up violent gang members en masse.

His "war on gangs" has seen thousands of criminals holed up in the country's notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre prison.

One day, Reform hopes, Britain's foreign inmates will join them there.

Mr Anderson has already spoken to Salvadorean authorities about renting spaces, according to The Sun.

Nigel Farage will today pledge to deport some 10,000 migrant offenders overseas and free up Britain's jails, rather than release some prisoners onto the streets early like Labour's plan.

Mr Trump struck a similar $6million (£4.5million) agreement with El Salvador to deport migrants from the US there earlier this year.

Lee Anderson will lead a delegation to central America within months for talks with Nayib Bukele's Government

PA

Reform UK is in talks with Nayib Bukele's El Salvador over a plan to deport all foreign criminals to the country's tough jails

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The Reform leader will also repeat his pledge to build pop-up "Nightingale prisons" like the hospital beds which were delivered in short order during the pandemic.

Writing for GB News just days ago amid fury over plans for PC Harper's killers to walk free, former Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster called for the same thing.

Reform's home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said last night: "We will deport all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons, sending them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador.

"We will use the space created to ensure that serious criminals stay where they belong: behind bars."

Prison overcrowding has led Andy Burnham into one of his most bitter rows so far during his stint as Prime Minister.

Mr Burnham was said to have been handed two options to keep PC Harper's killers in jail just days ago, but The Times reported last night that one of these could fall at the first hurdle.

The government has now ruled out one option, to exempt the killers of emergency workers from being released early, due to the threat of a legal challenge.

The only way to stop their release would be to block the early release of hundreds of prisoners convicted of manslaughter - which does not solve the general overcrowding problem.

Mr Farage may also risk the same issue when he pledges to reintroduce short sentences for shoplifters today, though "Nightingale prisons" could alleviate this.

Petty offenders have also been jailed in El Salvador - a popular policy among some both in Britain and the States who follow the "Broken Windows Theory".

Solving visible signs of disorder and petty crime, like broken windows, shoplifting and vandalism, removes an environment which encourages more serious crimes, supporters say.

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Criminal Science found that people’s perceptions of crimes are more affected by their sense of low-level disorder and police performance.

Low-level crime has been blamed for fears of "lawless London", where despite declining violent crime rates, "visible" offences such as shoplifting and phone theft are at their highest levels in years.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We have been clear that we wanted to go further and block more offenders from getting out sooner into their sentence but could not do so without risking prisons reaching capacity and collapsing.

"If that happened, police could not make arrests, courts could not remand offenders and there would be unchecked criminality on our streets."