Monday, September 13, 2010

Prisoners modify to Islam for prison perks

Richard Ford, Home Correspondent & ,}

Slideshow: Thousand of immature British women are converting to Islam. Read their stories

Inmates are converting to Islam in sequence to benefit perks and the insurance of powerful Muslim gangs, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today.

Dame Anne Owers says that a little convicted criminals are receiving up the sacrament in prison to welcome benefits usually accessible to practising Muslims.

The series of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically given the mid-1990s from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or eleven per cent. Staff at top-security prisons and girl jails have lifted concerns about the danger of non-Muslims and probable forced conversions.

Dame Annes report, Muslim Prisoners Experiences, published today, says that, although multiform high-profile terrorists have been locked up recently, fewer than 1 in 100 Muslim inmates have been convicted of terrorism.

She says that prison staff are questionable about those practising or converting to the conviction and warns that treating Muslim inmates as intensity or tangible extremists risks radicalising them. The inform says: Many Muslim prisoners stressed the certain and remedial purpose that Islam played in their lives, and the ease that eremite tact could satisfy in a stressed prison environment. This was in noted contrariety to the guess that religious observance, and quite acclimatisation or reversion, tended to produce between staff.

All prisons suggest a halal menu, that a little inmates see as improved than the usual choices. Muslims are immune from work and preparation whilst in attendance Friday prayers. Some converts, who are well known as preference Muslims, admitted that they had altered conviction since they got some-more time out of the cells to go to Friday prayers. One quoted in the inform said: Food great too, primarily this is what converted me.

In a little of the majority secure jails, the distance of the Muslim race is well above average. Two years ago, Muslim inmates accounted for a third of prisoners in Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire, and a entertain of inmates in Long Lartin in Worcestershire.

The inform says that inmates converted after guidance about Islam from alternative inmates or their family, to acquire await and insurance in a organisation with a powerful temperament and for element advantages. One invalid quoted in the report said: Ive got loads of close brothers here. They share with you, we look out for each other.

Muslim prisoners tended to inform some-more negatively on their prison experience and were additionally some-more expected to fright for their own reserve or protest of problems in their family with staff. In high-security prisons, three-quarters of Muslims pronounced they felt unsafe.

Dame Anne pronounced that unless staff intent effectively with them there was a real risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that the prison experience will create or barricade disunion and disaffection, so that prisons recover in to the village immature men who are some-more expected to offend, or even welcome extremism.

Tom Robson, vice-chairman of the Prison Officers Association, pronounced that a little impressionable prisoners were converting since they longed for standing and protection. What we have got at the impulse is an ceiling trend, he said. It is worrying.

Phil Wheatley, director-general of the National Offender Management Service, said: Our transparent process is that all prisoners are treated with colour with apply oneself and decency, recognising the different needs of a formidable prison population, and that the bona fide use of conviction in prison is supported.

Dame Annes investigate was formed on 85 prison investigation reports and in-depth interviews with 164 Muslim prisoners in eight jails. It follows reports of Muslim inmates looking to claim their management on the wings of prisons.

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