Influential hate preachers will be held in separate prison units after an official inquiry found inmates were acting as “self-styled emirs” behind bars.
A government-ordered review into radicalisation in jails has concluded that some charismatic prisoners exerted a “radicalising influence” over fellow Muslims. It also claimed that some have attempted to engineer segregation, encouraged aggressive conversions to Islam, and been involved in the intimidation of prison imams.
The claims have emerged in a review led by former prison governor Ian Acheson and commissioned last year by then justice secretary Michael Gove. Such concerns in Whitehall were disclosed by the Guardian in February.
Its conclusions will overturn 50 years of dispersing the most dangerous prisoners across the prisons system. Critics have previously warned that such a move could also provide a focal point for public protests and claims of a “British Guantanamo”.
The experience at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, where republican and loyalist prisoners organised themselves along military lines and ran their respective H-blocks, is often cited as the main argument against a separatist solution.
Scrutiny of the issue of influential clerics resurfaced last week when it was revealed that Anjem Choudary, a self-styled imam, faces years in jailfor drumming up support for Islamic State.
Ministers have confirmed planning is under way to create specialist units within the high security estate in order to remove the most dangerous extremists from the general population.
Introducing the measure in order to stop a small number of individuals from being able to “proselytise” to other inmates was one of the review’s key recommendations.
Since the 1960s terrorists incarcerated in England and Wales have been dispersed among six maximum security jails. They have then been regularly moved around the dispersal prisons to prevent long-term relationships building up between them.
The full report is classified but the Ministry of Justice has published a summary of the main findings. It said the review found evidence that extremism is a growing problem within prisons, which can manifest itself in various ways.
They include offenders advocating support for Isis, while “charismatic” prisoners acted as “self-styled emirs” – exerting a “controlling and radicalising influence” on the wider Muslim prison population.
Other examples cited were aggressive encouragement of conversions to Islam, unsupervised collective worship, sometimes at Friday Prayers – including pressure on supervising staff to leave the prayer room and attempts to engineer segregation by landing, by wing, or even by prison.
Books and educational materials promoting extremist literature have been allowed in some chaplaincy libraries while official prison imams have been intimidated. The review has also claimed that some prisoners have tried to exploit “staff fear of being labelled racist”.
The review concluded that “cultural sensitivity” among National Offender Management Service staff towards Muslim prisoners has “extended beyond the basic requirements of faith observance and could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views”.
Figures show there were 12,633 Muslims in prison in England and Wales as of the end of June. The number stood at 8,243 a decade earlier.
At the end of March, of the 147 people in prison for terrorism-related offences, 137 of them considered themselves to be Muslim.
A separate official report published last month said that at any one time the National Offender Management Service manages more than 1,000 prisoners who have been identified as extremist or vulnerable to extremism.
As well as the introduction of specialist units, governors have been instructed to ban extremist literature and remove anyone from Friday prayers who is “promoting anti-British beliefs or other dangerous views”.
Measures also include improving extremism prevention training for all officers and strengthened vetting of prison chaplains.
Liz Truss, the justice secretary, said: “Islamist extremism is a danger to society and a threat to public safety – it must be defeated wherever it is found. 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.”