Reform UK's Overseas Prison Plan: What the Countries Involved Are Saying
Reform UK has proposed sending foreign criminals held in British prisons to facilities abroad, naming El Salvador, Kosovo, Lithuania and Estonia as potential destinations, at a news conference on 11 August 2026.
Party leader Nigel Farage said Reform was exploring options to send foreign criminals to prisons in other countries, including El Salvador and Kosovo, and suggested conversations could be had with Lithuania or Estonia as Baltic state options. A Reform UK spokesman said the policy was focused on El Salvador, Kosovo and possibly other countries if they were open to the idea. The party suggested 10,000 prison spaces could be freed up if all foreign criminals were sent abroad to serve their sentences. BBC News
The proposal comes against a backdrop of severe capacity pressure in England and Wales. The average annual cost per prisoner in a public-sector prison was £60,018 in 2024/25, according to Ministry of Justice data. Successive governments have looked for ways to expand capacity without resorting to early-release programmes that have drawn political criticism.
The idea of renting prison space overseas is not new. The Conservatives introduced a policy to rent cells abroad while in government in 2023. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the plan was legislated for in government but Labour subsequently did not pursue it. The Conservatives have urged the government to revive the scheme. The Conservatives did not respond to requests to comment on Estonia's rejection of a prison rental deal with the UK. BBC News
Several of the countries named by Reform have either rebuffed the suggestion or are already committed to existing arrangements that would limit their capacity to accommodate British prisoners.
Lithuania's Ministry of Justice said there have been no discussions or consultations regarding accepting the transfer of all Lithuanian citizens imprisoned in the United Kingdom. A Lithuanian government spokesperson said the government did not see any scope for entering into practical arrangements of this kind. BBC News
Kosovo has agreed to lease 300 jail cells to Denmark under a deal worth £170m (€200m). A Kosovo government spokesperson said Kosovo would focus on enacting its deal with Denmark before entering into any new agreement of a similar nature. BBC News
Estonia, meanwhile, has reached a deal with Sweden to rent prison space and accept up to 600 Swedish inmates starting from July 2026. Sweden agreed to pay up to £52m (€61m) a year, with an additional £7,254 (€8,500) per prisoner per month from the 301st inmate onwards. On 5 August 2026, Estonia's Justice and Digital Minister Liisa Pakosta and Swedish Prison and Probation Service Director-General Rikard Jermsten signed a cooperation memorandum on prisoner living conditions. Reuters Äripäev
The UK government has its own history of exploring Estonian prison capacity. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed at a meeting with Minister Pakosta that British officials had visited and assessed the security of Tartu prison. UK Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle did not rule out sending prisoners to Estonia to ease severe overcrowding in UK prisons. In September 2024, however, UK ministers dismissed claims that Labour was considering sending criminals convicted in England and Wales to Estonia to serve their sentences. ERR The Guardian
Estonia's political landscape has also shifted. In August 2026, Estonia's coalition government lost its parliamentary majority following the defection of two of its MPs, potentially complicating any future negotiations on prison rental arrangements. Reuters
The broader context here is one of a policy area where rhetorical ambition is running well ahead of diplomatic feasibility. The countries Reform UK has named face concrete constraints. Lithuania has ruled out the idea outright. Kosovo's existing Danish commitment absorbs a significant share of its available capacity. Estonia's prison infrastructure, particularly the Tartu facility British officials have already inspected, is committed to Sweden from July 2026 onward. El Salvador remains the one named destination with no publicly stated objection, though no bilateral discussions have been confirmed.
The comparison with existing European arrangements is instructive. The Sweden-Estonia deal took shape over months of negotiation and produced a per-prisoner cost structure that, while lower than England and Wales's £60,018 average annual cost, still involves a substantial outlay. The Kosovo-Denmark agreement, at £170m for 300 cells, sets another reference point for what bilateral prison rental costs in practice. Neither deal involved transferring a country's entire foreign-national prison population — the scale Reform UK's 10,000-place figure implies.
For Westminster practitioners, the proposal sits in a crowded field. The Conservatives are pressing the government to adopt their legislated-but-unused rental power. Labour ministers have oscillated between dismissal and studied ambiguity on the Estonian option. Reform UK has now staked out the most expansive version of the policy, naming four countries and proposing a wholesale transfer of foreign-national offenders. Whether any of those countries would entertain the approach is, on the available evidence, doubtful for three of the four.
