PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Prisoners: Radicalism (9 February 2021)

The Government takes the threat posed by terrorist offenders very seriously and is committed to tackling radicalisation and terrorism in our prisons.

We have a range of capabilities and controls to manage the unique risk posed by terrorist offenders and to prevent them from radicalising others. All risk management is underpinned through specialist counter terrorism case management. This includes rehabilitative tools, which tackle the drivers of radicalisation and seek to draw prisoners away from extremist ideologies.

The Joint Extremism Unit (JEXU) is the strategic centre for counter-terrorism work in prisons; since 2017, it has led important investment and improvement in the sector. Over 30,000 prison staff have been trained to identify, report and deal with extremist behaviour in prison. The Government introduced separation centres to manage the risk of a small number of prisoners who may pose a particular risk of radicalising other offenders in the mainstream prison estate.

The CT Step Up programme will transform this response in prisons by addressing gaps in our current capabilities. The programme will increase counter-terrorism capability in the system by focusing resource into a number of centres of excellence and specialist functions that can deliver a strengthened set of controls and interventions to terrorist offenders at a pace and scale commensurate to the threat.