Islamist extremists are attempting to radicalise prisoners by deliberately getting custodial sentences or gaining jobs in jails, according to the Prison Officers Association (POA).
The warning comes as the justice secretary, Michael Gove, has ordered a review of how the prison and probation service tackle the radicalisation of offenders. The review will include an investigation into Muslim preachers radicalising inmates, according to the Sun.
But Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the POA, told the Guardian the problem of radicalisation was “far wider than imams”, and accused the justice secretary and the head of the National Offender Management Service (Noms) of “burying their heads in the sand” over the situation.
“The probe has to have a far wider reach,” he said. “We have concerns that Islamist extremists are deliberately getting custodial sentences in order to target vulnerable prisoners.
“They are often clever and well educated and can brainwash young people.”
The POA called for a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling radicalisation that included experts who prepare court reports to examine whether extremists were deliberately seeking jail sentences, and also looked at prison officer recruitment.
“We’ve spoken to the secretary of state and the head of Noms, and the response seems to be to bury their heads in the sand,” said Travis.
“They’ve buried their heads in the sand for five years and hoped the problem would go away, but it’s got worse.”
He added there was a problem with people becoming prison officers for just six to eight weeks in order to traffic “unauthorised articles” into prisons. The recruitment process allows applicants to specify which jail they would like to work in.
This meant it was possible to target prisons particularly vulnerable to radicalisation, such as those with high numbers of inmates convicted of terrorism offences.
“We’ve got a system where local recruitment is very dangerous,” he said. “If you’re a very extreme member of the [Muslim] community you can apply for a job at prisons with an extremist problem, like Belmarsh, which has a high number of inmates jailed for terror offences.
“They will often come from a well-educated background and because of local [recruitment] targets to represent the community, they will be a shoo-in if they pass the tests.”
But the POA said it would be wrong to target Islamic preachers in jails as the source of radicalisation.
“All the imams I know are very good and decent people,” said Travis. “I hope the Ministry of Justice utilises their skills in tackling radicalisation.”
An MoJ spokesman said that Gove shared the POA’s concerns: “The secretary of state has prioritised the prevention of radicalisation in prisons. On being appointed, he immediately stopped the Ibaana programme [a de-radicalisation scheme created by Gove’s predecessor Chris Grayling] and set up a root and branch review of extremism in prisons.
“We totally agree with the POA’s concerns and all the issues they raise will be considered by the review. Any information they submit to the review will be carefully and thoroughly considered.”
Alex Cavendish, an ex-prisoner who was released in 2014, said radicalisation was closely associated with gang culture within the prison system, which was a growing problem due to funding cuts, staff shortages and overcrowded jails.
“You have young guys in prison for offences like burglary for the first time who are vulnerable and extremely impressionable,” he said. “If there’s a dominant group of people in the wing they will try and recruit and it doesn’t matter what ethnicity they are.”
Cavendish said there was a significant Islamist presence in half of the six prisons that he was detained in during his sentence: Bullingdon in Oxfordshire, and Lincoln and Stocken in Rutland.
“I can see in a prison setting that this is an incredibly attractive lifestyle. You get protection by the brotherhood, plus material benefits,” he said.
Mizan Rahman, the former office manager for Siraat, a prison-based mentoring project across southern England that engaged with extremists, said the withdrawal of funding from such services had left a vacuum in Noms’ counter-terrorism strategy.
“Siraat was providing religious mentoring. Our mentors would challenge extremist narrative but the funding was cut,” said Rahman.
Siraat had their funding cut because they were practicing non-violent Salafis and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government “chose to draw the line in the sand and not engage or fund those they considered to be extreme in their religious beliefs and practice”, according to a report in Intersec, the Journal of International Security.
There are more than 12,000 Muslims in jails across England and Wales, out of a total prison population of more than 85,000 people, with the latest figures showing that 131 are in jail for terrorism offences.
Earlier this year, the Quilliam Foundation called for segregation in prisons to prevent non-jihadi inmates from becoming radicalised.
Last year, the chief executive of Noms, Michael Spurr, told BBC1’s Panorama there was a significant risk of prisoners being radicalised and committing terrorism after their release.
In the same documentary, Jordan Horner, who has taken the Islamic name Jamaal Uddin, said he converted other inmates after being jailed in December 2013 for trying to bring sharia law to the streets of London.
The programme makers also spoke to Michael Coe, who said he converted to Islam after meeting al-Qaida terrorist Dhiren Barot in jail. Coe, who had been jailed for eight years in 2006 after threatening police officers with a shotgun while on parole for a knifepoint carjacking, was met on his release from jail by two convicted Islamic extremists.