Counter-terror expert, Professor Peter Neumann, gave a warning to the government that putting together the convicted Islamic terrorists in one 'jail within a jail' will create a focal point for public protests. The proposal to replace dispersal system with British 'Alcatraz' to house convicted terrorists has alarmed prison chiefs.
Prime Minister David Cameron considered major changes on the custody of the convicted terrorist prisoners to prevent the prompting alarm among the prison chiefs.
He said in a statement, "We will not stand by and watch people being radicalized like this while they are in the care of the state... And I want to be clear - I am prepared to consider major changes: from the imams we allow to preach in prison to changing the locations and methods for dealing with prisoner convicted of terrorism offenses, if that is what required."
Jail within a Jail
Neumann explained, "The trade-off is this: you want to separate terrorist prisoners in order to prevent them from radicalizing others yet you do not want to a create a focal point for public protests - a 'Briitish Giantanamo,' however much of a representation that might be - or provide an opportunity for terrorist prisoners to create (or recreate) operational command structures inside prison that might not have existed outside."
Neumann also warned it could provide an opportunity to create an "operational command and control structure" for Isis in Britain that currently does not exist inside or outside the prison system.
Hierachial Organization
"The second point is now more important than ever. With large numbers of 'lone operators' who may not be particularly ideological and who have failed to join the command and control structures of groups like IS, the risk of them connecting with ideological and operational leaders while imprisoned is real. In other words, a policy of concentration may inadvertently help to create the kind of hierarchical organisation that the terrorists found it impossible to create outside," said Neumann.
Failed Experiments
Neumann, as an author of the comparative study of prison regimes for terrorist prisoners in 15 countries, the best way to ponder on such issue to have a Bristish dispersal system.
In his study, he cited the US-style supermax prison of the then Lernmont inquiry to answer the growing availability of explosives and weapons to criminals that said to be much greater than before. However, it was never implemented.
He also pointed out that the IRA prisoners in English jails made no deliberate attempt to radicalise or recruit "ordinary criminals" who they saw as unreliable and ill-disciplined: "Many al-Qaeda affiliated prisoners, on the other hand, see it as their duty to propagate their faith and political ideology and will consequently exploit whatever opportunities they are offered to approach other offenders and turn them into followers."
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "The justice secretary has asked the department to review its approach to dealing with Islamist extremism in prisons. This is being supported by external experts and sits alongside the cross-government work currently under way in developing deradicalisation programmes."
