United Kingdom unveils plans to tackle growing Islamist extremism in prisons

The MoJ announced in a statement that governors and prison officers will be given training, skills and authority needed to prevent influential extremist prisoners exerting control and radicalizing others being held in their prisons.

It concluded that “cultural sensitivity” among National Offender Management Service (Noms) staff towards Muslim prisoners has “extended beyond the basic requirements of faith observance and could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views”.

Recently, a study was made by former prison governor Ian Acheson into just how risky in-prison extremism can be, with the concluding results revealing that the results can be “lethal”.

The move comes after hate preacher Anjem Choudary was convicted at a court in London in July of supporting the Islamic State group.

The third, which is considered the most important in the government’s plan, aims at locking up the most risky extremists in isolated high-security blocs within prisons to prevent them from radicalizing other inmates.

The findings of the review released Monday recommended introducing the specialized units in order to stop a small number of individuals from being able to “proselytize” to other inmates.

“Preventing the most risky extremists from radicalising other prisoners is essential to the safe running of our prisons and fundamental to public protection”, Ms Truss said.

One of his key recommendations was to “incapacitate” violent extremists by keeping them away from other prisoners.

A government-ordered review into radicalisation in jails that accompanied today’s announcements suggested fanatics had attempted to engineer segregation and exploit a fear among staff of being labelled racist.

Some 12,633 Muslims were in prison in England and Wales at the end of June, compared to 8,243 a decade earlier.

“This must change in order to protect staff, prisoners and wider society and we have made dozens of recommendations to that end”, he added.

Of the 147 people in prison for terrorism-related offences, 137 of them considered themselves to be Muslim.

The second states banning extremist literature and removing anyone from Friday prayers who is “promoting anti-British beliefs or other unsafe views”.

“Anything else is just storing up an even more hard problem for when they are eventually released”.

But Daniel Sandford said that creating special units within prisons was not without risks.

Asked by Sky News if she recognized the risk of segregated areas becoming effectively mini-Caliphates, Truss said: “We’re extremely alive to those risks and we’ve looked at the experience in Northern Ireland, we’ve looked at experiences across Europe”.

But she insisted they will get the resources they need.