Convicted extremists who promote terror and violence are to be isolated from the general prison population and placed in new “specialist units” under plans to be announced by the government on Monday.
The creation of sealed-off units – “prisons within prisons” – aims to prevent extremists from spreading their ideologies to others while behind bars and follows lengthy investigations by experts into how to stop them.
The plans form part of a government response to a review of Islamist extremism in prisons to be unveiled in full by new justice secretary, Elizabeth Truss. Appointed last month by Theresa May to succeed Michael Gove, Truss said the move was part of a wider crackdown on extremism that was urgently needed. “The rise of Islamist extremism poses an existential threat to our society,” she said.
“I am committed to confronting and countering the spread of this poisonous ideology behind bars. Preventing the most dangerous extremists from radicalising other prisoners is essential to the safe running of our prisons and fundamental to public protection.”
Ministers have become increasingly alarmed at evidence that extremists target and preach to the most vulnerable inmates. As well as those convicted of terrorism offences, prisons hold a wide range of inmates judged extremist, including many with links to gangs.
In July, Ian Acheson, a former Home Office official and prison governor who headed the review for ministers, said a hardcore of proselytising jihadis inside prisons in England and Wales were so dangerous that they should be completely isolated. He found evidence that a hardcore group of prisoners were involved in “proselytising behaviour” among the 12,500 Muslim inmates in England and Wales.
The announcement comes after Anjem Choudary, one of the most notorious hate preachers living in Britain, was found guiltyat the Old Bailey of supporting Islamic State.
After avoiding arrest for years, Choudary, 49, was convicted after jurors heard he had sworn an oath of allegiance to Isis. He also has links to one of Lee Rigby’s killers, Michael Adebolajo, and the Islamist militant Omar Bakri Muhammad, and he urged followers to support Isis in a series of talks broadcast on YouTube.
Choudary and his co-defendant, Mohammed Rahman, 33, told their supporters to obey Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis leader, and to travel to Syria to support Isis, the court heard. Choudray and Rahman face up to 10 years in jail for inviting support for a proscribed organisation.
In the mid-1980s, Choudary and Bakri founded al-Muhajiroun, a shadowy network that promoted a hard-line version of Islam, calling for sharia law in the UK. It also cheered the 9/11 attacks, eventually leading to it being proscribed in 2010 under legislation outlawing the “glorification” of terrorism. The two men were convicted in July but the details were only made public last week.
Acheson has said the review looked at dispersing extremists throughout the prison population. He and his team visited Maghaberry prison’s Roe House, the “prison within a prison” that holds some of Northern Ireland’s most high-profile terrorists, and prisons in the Netherlands, France and Spain, where jihadi prisoners are segregated.