Ian Acheson

Body

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Synthetic drugs exploded across the prison estate causing devastation and helping entrench a drugs economy led by organised crime that is now almost too big and too lucrative to fail. My independent Government review of Islamist extremism revealed a senior management of the prison service defined by endless, useless layers of bureaucracy unable or unwilling to stop terrorists in the making. Instead of tackling these major problems, this invisible and unaccountable boss class busied itself with virtue signalling. I still can’t get over the Director General of the Prison Service piously ‘taking the knee’ outside a prison where you would hesitate to house cattle. A vivid representation of a law enforcement agency in terminal decline."

Date
April 10, 2024
Article Source
Content Variety
Body

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "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."

Date
April 3, 2024
Article Source
Content Variety
Body

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "We know our prison system is awash with drugs but just what are they smoking at the Ministry of Justice? A shocking story in the Times yesterday revealed what a desperate state Britain’s jails are in. Paul Morgan-Bentley, an undercover reporter, was hired at breakneck speed to work as a uniformed Operational Support Grade (OSG) escort at beleaguered HMP Bedford. He lifted the lid on a security nightmare."

Date
March 29, 2024
Article Source
Content Variety
Body

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Soldiers are trained in war fighting and they have no powers of arrest so it is likely that they could only be used in very limited circumstances, for example during a raid on suspected terrorists. It is plainly a necessary but insufficient stop gap to ensure that we are still able to respond to an attack by violent extremists, still judged by our security services to be ‘highly likely.’"

Date
September 25, 2023
Article Source
Content Variety

Daily Dose

Extremists: Their Words. Their Actions.

Fact:

On April 3, 2017, the day Vladimir Putin was due to visit the city, a suicide bombing was carried out in the St. Petersburg metro, killing 15 people and injuring 64. An al-Qaeda affiliate, Imam Shamil Battalion, claimed responsibility. 

View Archive