The threat of violence has never been far away from crowded jails but the problem is now endemic. The rehabilitation of offenders cannot happen within an unstable system. As the former prison governor Ian Acheson says: “Broken staff cannot help fix broken people.” A key factor in the crisis of authority in UK jails has been the rise of Islamist gangs after the jailing of radicals for terrorist attacks and plots. Almost 16,000 inmates in England and Wales now ­identify themselves as Muslim after a 190 per cent rise in their numbers in 22 years due to sentencing and religious conversions behind bars. Almost a decade ago, Mr Acheson warned the Commons justice committee that “all the ingredients for radicalisation” in jails were present. Islamist gang culture, sometimes expressed in loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood, mixes with ordinary criminality. Conversion to Islam behind bars is driven partly by the protection offered by gang membership in increasingly anarchic settings.

CEP Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy interviewed: "The terrorism definition should not be changed in the wake of the Southport murders but a new offence to address the gap for lone individuals planning mass killings should be considered, the UK’s terror watchdog has said. Jonathan Hall KC said the legal definition is “already wide” and expanding the threshold would “increase the possibility of inaccurate use and, in theory, abuse”.

CEP Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy writes: "To call something “terrorism” is no longer to merely describe a tactic, but instead issues the most severe form of moral condemnation. This was evident in last year’s announcement that the UK Government would treat misogyny as a form of extremist terrorism and consequently mobilise a raft of anti-terror resources to tackle it. Meanwhile, many called for the Southport murders perpetrated by Axel Rudakubana in July to be labelled as terrorism. Some on the Right wanted to pin them on Islamic terrorism, citing the fact that the killer had previously downloaded an al-Qaeda manual. On the other hand, those on the Left wanted to brand the stabbings as terrorism on the basis that the act had terrorised."

In accordance with the severity of his crimes, Clifford will be held in one of the maximum-security Category A prisons designed for the most dangerous offenders, at least initially. “There are only a limited number of prisons that can house those who have committed crimes of such gravity it must be impossible for them to escape,” says Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project. 

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "At least two people have died and several injured after a car was driven down a busy shopping street yesterday in Mannheim, in western Germany. A 40-year-old man has been arrested.

It is not clear yet if this attack was ideologically motivated. But car attacks like this are becoming horrifyingly common in Germany. In Magdeburg and Munich either side of last Christmas a total of seven people were murdered in two separate car rammings. In both cases, the suspected attackers were foreign nationals."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Aches writes: "What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime problem is more astrology than criminology. Such comments have influenced the creation of a new ‘charter’ eighteen months in the making, which signals the advent of kinder, gentler frisking in the nation’s capital."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "How do you create a low-trust society? One way to do so is to have an administrative class which seems to treat the views of ordinary people with contempt. Today’s news of a leaked Home Office report on counter-extremism is a classic of the genre. The report, commissioned by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, in the wake of the August 2024 riots, says that claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are a ‘right-wing extremist narrative’. "