World Summit on Counter-Terrorism
ICT's 8th International Conference - September 11, 2008
Workshop: Ideological Radicalization among Inmates
Increasingly, the use of terror as a means of political expression has becomes a more common occurrence in Europe and North America and civilians in these countries have come to be seen by certain extremist groups as a legitimate target. A consequence of this activity is that the number of terrorist prisoners held in prison is increasing. While traditional prisoner populations will periodically present management problems for prison authorities, the management of terrorist prisoners presents a unique challenge to the prison administrations in some jurisdictions while others, although not currently holding significant numbers of such prisoners, anticipate that it is inevitable that the number of terrorist prisoners will increase and the associated problems will develop in the near future.
The continuing war against terror - whether ideologically and nationalistically driven - has meant that increasing numbers of terrorists (or criminal offenders related to terrorist organizations) are now incarcerated in North america and Europe correctional/prison systems. The incarceration of terrorist prisoners has provided these individuals with a number of unintentional networking and training opportunities, for example:
- enhanced levels of interaction;
- opportunities to develop and improve the connection between terror and crime - particularly organised crime;
- the opportunity to develop links between terrorist groups; and, importantly,
- the leakage of terror into the corrections/prison systems.
The presence of terrorist prisoners has also provided an opportunity for the radicalisation of certain prisoner groups and the opportunity to recruit previous non-terrorist prisoners to the terrorist cause.
The Workshop discussion will present a range of levels of terrorist incarceration and radicalisation activity in prison - ranging from those jurisdictions with few active terrorists held in custody to those with many thousands.
Correction Systems now, increasingly, are facing a new modus operandi of the radicalists extreemers, have to cope with radical terrorists whose interest, while incarcerated, is to maintain their challenge to legitimate State authority, recruit new members, establish terror cells among inmates and continue to expand and plan terror operations from prison.
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