The murder of a prison officer on duty is closer now than at any time in the last 25 years. That was the inevitable conclusion I reached after the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick commissioned me to look into the threat posed by terrorists inside our high-security prisons and the safety of front-line staff in across our chaotic and dysfunctional penal estate. The impetus was a number of atrocious attacks in what ought to be our securest facilities – allegedly carried out by extremists using improvised weapons to maim and murder officers.
Violence against prison staff has evolved from an occasional occupational hazard to an atrocious normality without parallel in public life
Violence against prison staff has evolved from an occasional occupational hazard to an atrocious normality without parallel in public life. The last official data released shows assaults are at record highs. On average 29 officers are hurt every day. By ‘hurt’ we need to be clear – that means they are slashed, stabbed, bitten, scalded, strangled, covered in excrement, punched, spat on and sexually assaulted. In our young offender prisons, being assaulted is now a statistical inevitability for workers on duty.
But it is in our high security prison estate where that threat becomes lethal. These places hold the biggest national security threats. Around 230 prisoners are locked up for terrorism offences with anything up to 1,000 others being screened as at risk of becoming radicalised. These prisons are different. They hold a relatively new generation of offenders who will kill for ideas. In the case of Islamist extremists, they believe they have divine permission to kill and their only available targets are the ‘kuffar’ in uniform.
I was asked by government to investigate the capability of the prison service to meet this threat a decade ago. As Lord Chancellor, the editor of this magazine commissioned my formal review. I found arrogance and incompetence at the top of the organisation which was a threat to national security. Ten years on and it looks like little has changed. In January this year, the Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor found that drone defences were so bad at two of our maximum-security facilities, Long Lartin and Manchester, there was a real risk that drones could deliver explosives or ammunition to a terrorist’s cell window.
This was why I concluded in my rapid review that the threat to prison staff was now ‘intolerable.’ Guns and explosives have been smuggled into high security prisons in the past. IRA prisoners escaped briefly from the supposedly escape proof HMP Whitemoor in 1994 after smuggling two guns into the prison. The threat from gangs of Islamic extremists inside our prisons is exponentially worse.
Things are not helped by a culture of appeasement which has grown as control has been ceded. Hashem Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber attacked staff in the High Security Unit at HMP Belmarsh, our most extreme custody, with what the court heard was ‘animalistic’ ferocity. He was moved to a separation centre for radicalisers at HMP Frankland, only to allegedly launch an attack on staff there using a fabricated weapon and hot oil. How such an exceptionally dangerous man was able to do this will be the subject of a formal review led by Jonathan Hall KC.
Hall has experience and good instincts in this area as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. A report of his in 2022 said Islamists in two prisons were setting up Sharia courts to enforce strict Muslim codes, including punishments like flogging for those who disobeyed. The state is not in charge in such places and I suspect we are about to see why in forensic detail.
In the meantime, I have called for a number of radical changes in prison policy to mitigate the intolerable threat to staff. This includes expanding the non-lethal and lethal tactical options available to prison staff dealing with a terrorist incident when police support has not arrived in time.
But it is clear the most urgent priority is to totally incapacitate the most dangerous ideologues who still have an unquenchable appetite for violence. They must be put in a special high-control unit, staffed by prison officers but in a military base secure from drones. This sort of radical idea will be opposed by our criminal justice class who are divorced from reality. But they will be nowhere to be seen if military ordinance falls into the hands of fanatics with nothing to lose. If I’m imagining it, you can be sure jihadists inside are considering it.
The focus should not be on their rights, but the rights of prison staff to work without being attacked. We have let the men and women who protect our national security down badly. There is an overwhelmingly moral case for urgent and decisive action to deal with this threat.
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