Thousands of foreign criminals held in Scottish jails have cost the nation's taxpayers more than £70million in the last five years.
The number of Eastern European felons imprisoned in Scotland soared to an all-time high of 126 in April 2014, with most hailing from Poland, Lithuania and Romania.
The costs, described as "completely out of control" by tax campaigners, have raised fresh fears about the record levels of immigrants that would be admitted in an independent Scotland to meet Alex Salmond's 24,000-a-year target.
There are currently around 300 foreigners in Scotland's 8,100-strong prison population. But the total number imprisoned in the last five years has exceeded 2,223 criminals of more than 50 nationalities.
Labour justice spokesman Graeme Pearson has argued that the immigrant prison population presents a rapidly growing problem which could worsen in an independent Scotland.
He said: "It is certainly disappointing and the cost will rise if more immigrants are encouraged to move to Scotland.
"One of the biggest challenges is the cost of translation services for the police as well as in prisons and the court system as it costs millions for interpreters and translators.
"The increasing strain also extends to the health service as well as education and the social services. You only have to go into a few Scottish schools to see that English not being the main language is a huge problem."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article