Islamist gangs are filling the void in our prisons

The state is not in charge of the system, thanks to years of staffing cuts, a lack of will and feckless mandarins

Whatever the latest banalities issued by the Ministry of Justice in response to claims by Steve Gallant – a hero of the London Bridge terror attack and former inmate of HMP Frankland – that Islamist gangs have orchestrated a shift in the “balance of power” at the prison, the state is not fully in charge of our prison system. Nowhere near. Years of criminally stupid austerity cuts to front-line staff, supine leadership and incompetence by unaccountable senior mandarins have combined to produce a battle for power inside jails that we are losing.
This retreat creates security nightmares in Victorian slums like HMP Wandsworth and Bedford, but our high- security estate is not immune from the effects. Credulous and violent young men coming into a system rocked by an officer staffing crisis will cleave to power structures that protect them and give thwarted lives meaning. Predators of all kinds – including Islamist and neo-fascist extremists – see legitimate authority in retreat and fill the void. 
HMP Frankland, a high-security men’s prison in north-east England, is regarded as one of our better prisons. But even here, there will be a constantly evolving struggle by highly dangerous prisoners to establish themselves in a hierarchy. It’s perfectly rational for ideological and criminal gangs to work together to carve up territory and control a very lucrative drugs economy. 
Strange new alliances produce effects previously unseen. In more than one prison, it is reported that sex offenders have converted to Islam, ostensibly for protection. These prisoners will have previously been regarded as targets and untouchable, to such an extent that whole prisons are required to segregate them from “ordinary” inmates. 
Religiously and other ideologically motivated gangs were a feature of our high-security prisons long before the government asked me to investigate Islamist extremism back in 2016. Then, I found a culture of incompetence and appeasement that meant senior managers in the service either didn’t know or didn’t want to know the nature and extent of radicalisation.
There have been dramatic improvements since, as a result of some of my recommendations, but these have been externally imposed on a service in denial and resistant to change imposed from outside. Perhaps acute embarrassment played a role, too. 
But in another high-security prison, HMP Woodhill, rates of assault and staff shortages were so bad that the special unit to separate highly subversive terrorist offenders, which I insisted should be opened to control radicalisation, was forced to close.
Two other maximum security jails, HMP Long Lartin and HMP Whitemoor, were inspected last year. They were both found to be squalid and struggling. In the case of Whitemoor, a modern establishment in Cambridgeshire, chief inspector Charlie Taylor said it was one of the dirtiest he had ever inspected. You might ask what this has to do with national security. It’s simple. If staff can’t be bothered to get something as simple as the bins emptied, what else more serious is going wrong?
These places are profoundly complex and difficult environments to manage. When I visited Long Lartin some years ago while at the Home Office, I asked the governor what his ambition was. His answer staggered me: “To be a senior civil servant, like you.” While pay and conditions may have improved, it’s extraordinary that we reward people accountable for so much risk with so relatively little. And far less than those layers of bureaucracy pressing down from a remote HQ. 
I don’t entirely accept Mr Gallant’s view that the power struggle is over and the gangs have won. The situation is variable throughout the country and, in some well-led prisons where there are sufficient numbers of staff clearly and confidently in charge, the line is being held. It’s also the case that genuine religious conversion can be a powerful force for redemption and change. 
But he surely has a point in other places, where pragmatism – or appeasement – is the name of the game. This is largely because there are not sufficient staff or will to reassert lost authority. Where this is happening in prisons that hold large numbers of convicted terrorists, like Frankland, it is profoundly dangerous. 
One of the most chilling aspects of my 2016 review emerged from private discussions with groups of front-line staff in high-security prisons. There they discussed, in a matter-of-fact way, the sharp end of a loss of control: their vulnerability to being taken hostage by terrorist prisoners and murdered. I believe we are still far too close to that awful scenario being realised. It is late, but not too late to take back control.
Ian Acheson’s book Screwed: Britain’s prison crisis and how to escape it is published by Biteback on April 11