Polish authorities say they have not received a list identifying Polish citizens who could be released from British prisons and returned to Poland, as a major change to prison-release rules in England and Wales begins on 1 October. Poland’s Interior Ministry says it consequently does not know how many Polish nationals will be affected, what offences they committed or when particular individuals may arrive.
The issue was raised by Rzeczpospolita, which received responses from Poland’s Interior Ministry (MSWiA) and Justice Ministry. MSWiA said it was aware of the British changes but that, at the time of its response, no list of people covered had been sent to the ministry.
The British reforms require an important distinction, however. The approximately 700 prisoners expected to be released on 1 October are not 700 foreign offenders being deported.
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Figures published by the UK Ministry of Justice show that 700 is the estimated number of prisoners of all relevant nationalities expected to leave custody on the first day of the first tranche of Britain’s new “progression model”. Around 4,500 first-day releases are estimated across ten tranches running until June 2027.
The progression model applies to eligible prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences in England and Wales. The Ministry of Justice’s published exclusions cover rape, certain child sexual offences, offences connected with organised child sexual exploitation, unlawful killing and indecent assault, while life sentences and Extended Determinate Sentences are also outside the scheme.
The commencement regulations phase the new arrangements in from 1 October, beginning with existing eligible prisoners serving sentences of less than 575 days and extending through further tranches scheduled up to 8 June 2027.
Foreign-national prisoners are a separate part of the picture. Britain already operates an Early Removal Scheme allowing eligible foreign prisoners who are liable to removal from the UK to leave prison before their normal release point for the purpose of deportation.
Under the current statutory framework, eligible foreign prisoners can be removed after serving the required minimum part of their custodial term. Britain’s Sentencing Act 2026 also contains provisions intended to allow eligible foreign offenders ultimately to be removed for deportation at any point after sentence, further expanding the government’s ability to clear foreign offenders from prisons.
That means some Polish prisoners affected by changes to Britain’s prison system could ultimately return to Poland, but the Ministry of Justice’s figures of 700 and 4,500 do not establish how many will be Polish or how many will be deported.
Polish nationals nevertheless form a significant part of Britain’s foreign-offender caseload. The latest UK Ministry of Justice prison statistics show there were 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales on 30 June, accounting for 12% of the prison population. Polish citizens represented around 6% of foreign nationals in custody.
A Home Office answer to Parliament records that 530 Polish foreign national offenders were returned from the UK in the year ending June 2026, up from 453 a year earlier. Poland was behind only Albania and Romania among nationalities recorded in the published return figures.
There is already some formal information-sharing between the two countries. The UK’s Foreign Nationals in Prison Policy Framework lists Poland among countries with which Britain has a bilateral consular convention.
British prisons are required to notify the Polish embassy when a Polish national enters custody, regardless of whether the prisoner requests consular contact. The prescribed notification includes the prisoner’s identity, prison number, sentence length and offence. That obligation, however, is different from providing Warsaw with a consolidated list showing which Polish nationals are about to be released or removed from Britain.
MSWiA told Rzeczpospolita that Poland’s Border Guard can take action against a returning person where the relevant services have made an appropriate entry providing legal grounds to do so. Simply having served part of a British prison sentence does not by itself mean that a Polish citizen returned after release will be placed in a Polish prison.
That is different from a formal prisoner transfer, under which someone is transferred between countries specifically to continue serving a sentence. British early removal and deportation procedures generally remove an offender from the UK rather than transfer the British sentence to a Polish prison.
The immediate unanswered question is therefore narrower than some Polish reporting has suggested: not whether 700 foreign criminals will arrive in Poland on 1 October, but how many Polish nationals are among the prisoners affected by Britain’s changing release and removal arrangements, which of them will actually be returned to Poland and how much advance information Polish authorities will receive before they arrive.
