After just eight months in prison, the British judiciary sent Boris Becker back to his home country as a free man to make room in the prisons. In Britain, more than half of prisons are overcrowded – no other country in Western Europe incarcerates more offenders than the British.
Boris Becker arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London in March 2022. The former tennis star has now been released after just eight months in prison.
At the end of April, Boris Becker had reached the low point of his career. London’s Southwark Crown Court sentenced the former tennis star to two and a half years in prison for bankruptcy offences. At the time it was said that the former tennis star could only expect part of his sentence to be suspended after about fifteen months. But now the drama has taken a happy turn for the protagonist: After only eight months, Becker is released from HMP Huntercombe prison in the county of Oxfordshire and deported to his home country of Germany, various media reports on Thursday.
Deportations should create space
Becker thus benefits from a British regulation under which foreign offenders can be released early from prison – on condition that they leave Great Britain immediately. Last year, the Interior Ministry released 1,136 foreign offenders early from prison. The reason: the British prisons are hopelessly overcrowded, which is why the deportation of foreign prisoners is supposed to make room.
Normally, such inmates are taken directly from the prison to an airport by the police and flown directly to their home country. However, the “Daily Mail” had already reported in advance of the releasea TV station has secured the exclusive rights to the recordings of Becker’s return and is therefore paying for his deportation flight in a private jet.
Becker benefits from the fact that he never became a British citizen, although he has lived in London since 2012. His girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, who visited him in prison, also lives in the British metropolis.
In Germany, Becker could possibly live in a villa in Bavaria, where his 87-year-old mother enjoys a lifetime right of use. It was initially unclear whether Becker would have to meet probation requirements in his home country. What is certain is that the three-time Wimbledon champion will not be allowed to return to Great Britain until the entire duration of his prison sentence, which is actually two and a half years, has expired.
Assets in the millions concealed
The three-time Wimbledon winner was sentenced to an unconditional prison sentence at the end of April because he had concealed assets worth millions. The background to the conviction is a lengthy bankruptcy procedure. Becker is said to owe a total of 61.5 million euros to fourteen creditors, some of whom were previously business partners and friends. The London grand jury found it proven that Becker had deliberately withheld accounts from his insolvency administrators and failed to disclose ownership of real estate.
After his conviction, Becker served the first few weeks of his sentence at London’s Wandsworth Prison in south London, which is notorious for overcrowding, violence and poor sanitation. He was then transferred to lower security Huntercombe Prison.
Britain jails many offenders
The early release of foreign prisoners is a measure to counteract the old problem of overcrowded British prisons. The pandemic has created a backlog in the courts and prison system, which has contributed to exacerbating the situation.
According to a September compilation of the British House of Commons more than half of all prisons in England and Wales are considered overcrowded. A total of almost 8,000 prisoners are behind bars for whom there is actually no room. It recently became known that 400 police cells are to be temporarily converted into permanent detention centers. In February, Justice Minister Dominic Raab presented plans to create 4,000 new prison places – by 2025 the government actually wants to create 20,000 new prison places.
One reason for the bottlenecks is the comparatively harsh British criminal law. According to Eurostat figures from 2021 In England and Wales, 144 people per 100,000 population are serving a prison sentence, and the figures are similar in Scotland. This makes Great Britain the western European country with the most prison inmates. Only in the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary are there more people in prison compared to the total population.