Muslims are applying for jobs in prisons, and even seeking prison sentences, in order to radicalise inmates, the Prison Officers Association (POA) has claimed.
The POA spoke out when the justice secretary, Michael Gove, ordered a review of how the prison service is combatting radicalisation within prisons. The review is to include an investigation into the radicalisation of inmates by Muslim preachers.
Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the POA, warned that the problem extends “far wider than imams”.
‘Brainwashing’ other prisoners
Mr Travis went on to call for a broader investigation into radicalisation within prisons:
“The probe has to have a far wider reach. 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.”
He said that some radicalised Muslims apply for jobs at prisons where extreme Islam is already a problem:
“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”.
Impressionable young prisoners at risk
Ex-prisoner Alex Cavendish, who was released in 2014, said that three of the six prisons in which he was detained during his sentence had a significant radical Muslim presence.
He also said that radicalisation was linked with gang culture, which is a growing problem in prisons.
“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.”
‘Burying their heads in the sand’
Mr Travis accused the justice secretary and the head of the National Offender Management Service of “burying their heads in the sand for five years”. He said they had “hoped the problem would go away, but it’s got worse.”
The POA has called for a multidisciplinary approach, monitoring prison recruitment and court reports to check whether Muslims are actively seeking sentences.
This is not the first indication of Islamic radicalisation in prisons. Last month it was reported that non-Muslim inmates in a number of major UK prisons were being forced to pay the jizya, a tax, to Muslim prisoners for ‘protection’.
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