· Managers admit struggle to control extremist inmates
· Internal documents reveal rising culture of violence
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3037
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian
The growing number of terrorist prisoners are forging connections with the existing http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2804 inside Britain’s high security jails to the alarm of senior Prison Service managers, according to internal Ministry of Justice documents.
They say there is “an urgent requirement” to understand the impact of the number of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3140 in high security prisons: “As it stands, there is no intervention available to us to counter terrorist behaviour or to counter the threat of radicalisation. The impact of terrorists on prison regimes in general can be particularly disruptive.”
The warning will send a wave of anxiety through Whitehall as it comes more than 18 months after prison unions first publicly warned about the lack of a national strategy to deal with the rising number of terrorist prisoners. The prison managers also disclose that the effort to gather intelligence on terrorist offenders in prison is financed by already stretched existing funds and may not be able to continue beyond April without a new injection.
“An extremist monitoring unit [EMU is in place within the high security estate directorate and currently receives Home Office funding,” say the justice ministry documents. “It is not yet confirmed whether this funding will continue beyond the current year.”
Ministers are also being asked to set up more high security courts and to look at expanding the capacity of the eight high security jails, which can hold up to 9,000 of the highest risk, category A prisoners.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/mar/03/prisons.terrorism.uk