Nigerians hired as prison workers in UK ‘sleep in their cars’ to save on accommodation

Newly recruited prison officers in the UK — including many from Nigeria — are reportedly seen camping or sleeping in their cars to save on accommodation.  

The Telegraph reports that the recruitment of foreign workers was part of measures to address the shortage of personnel to oversee the UK’s overcrowded prisons.

According to the publication, the prison service is for the first time sponsoring skilled worker visas for overseas workers after a change in the rules enabled them to recruit from abroad.

Prison governors said many of the recruits came from Nigeria and included not only skilled workers but also those switching from other visa routes.

However, the Prison Officers Association (POA) has reported cases of overseas recruits showing up on their first day with the assumption that they would be given accommodation along with their job.

Mark Fairhurst, the president of the POA, said one foreign recruit was commuting the 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work but then decided it was cheaper to sleep in his car outside the prison.

He said at another facility, a recruit from abroad set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison after realising that there was no accommodation provided with the job.

“We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow and with their families saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?’,” Fairhurst said.

The recruitment surged after the visa rules changed in October 2023, allowing prison officers to be on the list of skilled workers eligible for sponsorship.

The Telegraph said sources from the ministry of justice (MoJ) have suggested that up to 250 foreign nationals have so far been sponsored to work in the prison service after passing through their Zoom interviews and vetting.

The publication quoted prison governors as noting that there are significantly more applicants which include those switching from other visas. They claimed that in one month last year two-thirds of the 3,500 would-be recruits were from Africa.

Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), said the demand appeared to have been fuelled by word of mouth online.

“It’s turned into an approach that has been promoted online by the expat Nigerian community,” he said.

He said it had created difficulties in some prisons where there were a disproportionate number of foreign prison staff and, in remote rural areas, issues over their integration into the local community. There had also been “issues about language and communication,” in some jails.

Fairhurst also criticised the prison service policy of hiring officers over Zoom and urged it to return to in-person interviews.

He said that frontline prison officers were routinely being recruited without any face-to-face interviews.

“Recruits were then given only six weeks’ training which was not enough time to learn how to manage prisoners,” he said.

He said the process was “simply not fit for purpose” and that it was not surprising that corrupt and under-qualified officers were being recruited.

There are also growing concerns about cases of misconduct among prison officials.

The report said a record 165 prison staff were sacked last year for misconduct, an increase of 34 percent on the previous year, according to the HM Prison and Probation Service.

This month a former HMP Wandsworth prison officer was jailed for 15 months after she was filmed having sex with an inmate.