Prison cuts: 'lack of staff to detect extremists behind bars'

Cuts to the number of prison officers are making it harder to sift through the "growing haystack of extremists" behind bars in England, the former head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) has warned.

Chris Phillips said that with fewer prison staff and police officers it is becoming more difficult to detect that "single needle" that will "go off and do something really nasty".

The Justice Select Committee has criticised the government for cutting the number of prison officers by almost 30 per cent in the last five years.

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Phillips, who was head of NaCTSO for six years until 2011, warned that the general prison population was growing as officer numbers were shrinking. "What we have is a growing haystack of extremists where we still have to find the single needle that's going to go off and do something really nasty," he told the BBC.

“But, of course, we've got less people to go and look for them as well so it's a really difficult thing for the police service and prison service to deal with."

One former prisoner told the BBC that radicalisation had grown during his 15 years in jail for armed robbery. He claimed to have seen prisoners plotting acts of terrorism and said that inmates would often "join the extremists" because they were promised protection.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling rejected the claims, arguing that prison overcrowding was virtually at its lowest level for a decade and spending had increased for measures to prevent radicalisation.

Official figures show that the number of Muslim prisoners in England and Wales has risen from 5,502 in 2002 to 12,225 in 2014, fewer than one per cent of whom are in jail for terrorism offences.

A 2010 report by Dame Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons at the time, warned that viewing Muslim inmates "through the lens of extremism" risked alienating prisoners and fuelling resentment.

One Muslim former prisoner said he was unfairly judged as a "radical or a fundamentalist" after helping to convert other inmates.