Guest blog from CSC Research Intern Abdul Munin:
The Chief Inspector of Prison Anne Owers today stated that Muslim prison gangs are attempting to radicalise inmates.
Owers said: "There was a perception among officers that some Muslim prisoners operated as a gang and put pressures on non-Muslim prisoners to convert, and on other Muslim prisoners to conform to a strict and extreme interpretation of Islamic practice."
Although only eight prisoners at Whitemoor have been jailed under terror legislation, there were risks from a prison gang culture conducive to the conversion of inmates and their subsequent radicalisation. The problems that now exist between staff and inmates echoes similar findings from earlier this year with regards to appropriate behavior towards Muslim prisoners.
Phil Wheatley, director general of the National Offender Management Service, has said that efforts to "improve the relationships between staff and prisoners is a priority and measures have been implemented to tackle this, including training to develop staff understanding of the growing Muslim population."
Dr Peter Neumann from King's College London has warned however that European prisons face the risk of becoming "major hubs" of terrorist activity and that "jihadist prisons" were necessary to deal with the problem.
