Although no specific precedent for these cases has been established in the courts to date, the Home Office may be liable to compensate victims of crimes that have been committed by repeat criminal offenders of foreign decent, who should have been deported and were not.

The reasoning behind these claims is that the negligence of the government to take proper action by deporting these individuals gave them the opportunity to commit new and in some cases more heinous crimes when released from jail. Average claims by individual victims could range in the tens of thousands of pounds and could potentially cost the Home Office hundreds of thousands in compensation payouts.

It is a primary duty of the Home Office to maintain public safety. In many of these cases, it may be construed that its irresponsible decisions not to deport was the cause of the misfortune and injury of these victims.

The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke is sitting on the hot seat, more so following his admission that 5 foreign criminals who were released, instead of being deported, and then went on to commit additional crimes against citizens, leaves him at fault and a target for litigation action initiated by a huge numbers of victims. One hot media case is that of the murder of Maryann Leneghan, in which one of the murderers should have been deported - before he took part in her savage slaying. Kosovan illegal immigrant Indrit Krasniqi was one of the 1,023 criminals allowed to roam free in Britain instead of being kicked out. Krasniqi, an 18-year-old, of Oxford Road, Chiswick, arrived in Britain illegally as a 13-year-old but was allowed to stay until his 18th birthday but by the time of the murder, his legal leave has already expired. Furthermore, he was already under a 40-hour community service order for driving without insurance and a licence, giving false information to police and obstructing justice in January of last year. Krasniqi had also received a referral order from Richmond Youth Court in 2004 for two common assaults, and a written police warning for possessing cannabis in August 2003. A case of too little, too late; he has finally been served deportation papers which will be executed after he finishes his jail sentence for murdering Maryann Leneghan.

David Davis, the Shadow home secretary, agreed that there was most probably a case for victims to win compensation claims. Davis stated, "I haven't thought about it in detail and I think there probably is a legal case because this is a massive failure of public duty. The Home Office has one single overriding duty which is to protect the safety of the public. What has happened here is this series of crimes that would not have happened at all had they done their duty."

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