- Wednesday, April 24, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
JAILS to prevent extremists from radicalising fellow prisoners are being underused, staff members at these units told the Ministry of Justice.
According to estimates cited by The Guardian, about 700 to 1,000 prisoners are considered a risk due to their extremist views and as of 31 March 2019 there were 223 people in custody in Britain for terrorism-related offences.
But staff at two of the three separation centres told Ministry of Justice researchers that referral rates to these units were low.
Although Frankland prison and Full Sutton prison each can hold eight prisoners, only three to six prisoners on average were held there between June 2017 and December 2018. A third facility at Woodhill prison was empty.
A reason given for the low number of referrals was poor recording of extremism behaviour.
“It was also thought that selection for the separation centres was quite rigid, with few prisoners meeting the criteria, especially where all alternative management strategies had been exhausted,” the study said.
A key challenge identified was that many men had refused to engage in aspects of the centres, especially interventions to support disengagement from extremism and address their offending behaviour.
Staff at these centres also reported that the prisoners felt they were being discriminated against by being placed in a separation centre, particularly as all those separated were Muslim. There were some reports of the men referring to the centres as ‘concentration camps’, ‘Guantanamo Bay’ and ‘Muslim centres’.
All of the prisoners during the study period were considered to be Islamist extremists.
