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The terror attack by Khalid Masood, 52, on Westminster Bridge and the Palace of Westminster in London on March 22, 2017 killed five and injured dozens. Masood's criminality and prison past came to light, as it was confirmed he had spent over 2 years behind bars the UK for a knife attack and a stabbing.

He served time in Lewes jail, East Sussex, Wayland prison in Norfolk, and Ford open prison, West Sussex.

Photos: Photo: Reuters, Toby Melville

Reportedly, in 2015-2016 about 7,500 referrals - due to concerns about people thought to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism - were made to Prevent. However, out of them, action was taken in 1 in every 10 cases and no action at all was taken in 37% of the cases.

Masood was known to the authorities and had come under MI5's radar as "peripheral" figure in a terrorism investigation but later it was decided he didn't constitute a threat. According to the UK PM Theresa May - at the time of the attack - he was "not the subject of any current investigations" and there "was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack."

Neither the UK terror legislation, nor the advocated community effort via Prevent referrals have in the end intercepted Masood's actions. Finally, the anti-extremism strategy of UK prisons also failed to curb his determination to unleash an attack on the British capital.

Whether Masood was radicalized in prison or not - his turn to extremism slipped right through the cracks of the Prevent program, the very strategy that's supposed to safeguard people from becoming radicalized.

Another example of Prevent's porous strategy manifested itself in the 18-year-old Ahmed Hassan, an Iraqi asylum seeker, who was found guilty of attempted murder in the case of Parsons Green Tube bombing in London in September 2017 – only months after the Westminster Bridge attack.

Photos: Reuters, Luke MacGregor; Reuters, Sylvain Pennec; AP, Kirsty Wigglesworth

Hassan had a foster family in Britain and a mentor, but despite his new life in the UK, which he entered as a child asylum-seeker in 2015, he still had expressed a desire to wreak his revenge on Britain. According to Hassan's mentor, Kayte Cable, the teen's consent wasn't required as he was underage, but that meant he didn't really agree to take part in Prevent and therefore was not properly engaged with the scheme.

While government and community initiatives are important and they do work in the majority of cases, there will be those who slip out of the net, Dr. Imran Awan, Associate Professor in criminology at Birmingham City University told Sputnik. People may disengage – i.e. "not commit an attack or not want to commit an attack," but changing their views - i.e. deradicalization – is harder to achieve, he said.

Apparently, Hassan has neither disengaged, nor deradicalized, as the court was told that he "intended this to be a lethal attack."

The price for slip-ups, when it comes to public security, is too high to let them happen, whether unintentionally or due to inherent flaws of the national anti-extremism strategy.

Between 2000 and 2017, 127 people died as a result of in UK terror atrocities, according to Global Terrorism Database (GTD) - 37 of them victims of 2017 terror attacks.

A former prisoner at the HM Prison Belmarsh, David [not his real name] says that in practice Prevent ends up being a payday for practitioners and a box-ticking exercise for the people put through it.

When Prevent fails to actually prevent 'on the outside,' the perpetrator would theoretically get convicted and end up in the British prison system, with its own challenges and crises.

Both containment and elimination of radicalization 'on the inside' – although the target of the government's new taskforce – is penetrable and here is why.

One of the key concerns around the argument that prisons are hotbeds of Islamic extremism and other forms of radicalization is engagement and exertion of control by influential extremist prisoners on those – both Muslim and non-Muslim – serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism.

People come in to prisons from all walks of life with different religious beliefs and backgrounds, and prison officers have to deal with all of them on the basis they have been sentenced by the court, explains Glyn Travis, spokesperson for the Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers (POA).

Former detainee David had spent months in Belmarsh prison awaiting his trial.

He explained that prisoners are well aware that if they are seen to be radicalizing others, it can influence their trial, as "everything they do and say is being monitored."

The new measures, however, may create a new risk of breeding more extremist ideology as opposed to decreasing it, Dr. Awan told Sputnik.

However, a British Muslim and a former prisoner – David – told Sputnik it is not all black and white when it comes to imams and their work in prisons. While Muslim chaplains have a certain amount of respect from the prisoners and are generally liked, they are also seen as part of the prison establishment, he said.

"While there is a certain amount of respect and cordial relationship, the primary concern of prisoners is that nothing goes wrong in their upcoming trial. They are unlikely to open up to imams about anything other than benign issues," he told Sputnik.

Thus, in principle, prisoners who'd want to keep their extremist views under wraps, can do so and even assistance by imams won't abate the evolving threat, especially considering they are not on sight 24/7.

You can get one-on-one sessions with imams but it is very hard because chaplains are not on site much and they're not well-funded, David explained. However, Mr. Travis argued that imams deal with different regimes in each prison and it is expected they wouldn't always be available.

"More often, you can get a 'listener' - a prisoner form the wing, who had a basic training course, and you get a chance to sit down and talk to them," David told Sputnik.

Will 'basic training' cut it when national government strategies fail to do so?

With the UK prison service in crisis, lack of funding and staffing resources are among key problems standing in the way of comprehensive and coordinated strategy that's required to monitor and counter extremism.

The prison estate is complex, comprising over 43,000 directly employed staff across multiple sites and engaging with many local partner agencies and structures. In November 2016, UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) set out a range of measures to help tackle rising prison violence. At the 2016 Autumn Statement, the government announced an additional £500m of funding for MoJ, including a £104m program to recruit an additional 2,500 prison officers by December 2018.

Despite these measures, spending on prisons in 2017 was down 22% since 2009/10, and there was a quarter fewer prison officers than in 2010.

"At some point there has to be a will of the state to fund training for staff on the frontline. Until the state's willing to actually incorporate funding and will behind the sharp edge, you will have a problem. That's why when you look at most prison reports – even those by independent reviewers – they stress the idea that prisoners feel stigmatized, stereotyped, and not enough is being done to tackle that, even before you start fighting extremism," Dr. Awan told Sputnik.

The system is in place for the staff to report wrongdoing of all nature, whether it is potential radicalization or corruption, POA's Glyn Travis told Sputnik. But he expressed his concern with the government's policies.

In the case of the knife-wielding terrorist Khalid Masood, the process of his reintegration into British society after time in prison didn't go well, to say the least.

He shot dead by police after he plowed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing pedestrians and stabbing a police officer to death.

Generally, there is a question mark around reintegration of prisoners in their communities, especially for young British Muslims, explains Dr. Awan.

"There is a real stigma attached to going to prison within the Muslim communities. When they come out, prisoners can feel very ostracized and actually leave their place of residence and become part of a whole different network. A lot of Syrian returnees that come to Britain now, it is still very secretive as to what happens to them - whether they just come back to Channel or whether they are being monitored."

Part of Prevent's review by the government in 2011 was increased emphasis on integration, democratic participation and interfaith dialogue, where "stronger sense of 'belonging' and citizenship makes communities more resilient to terrorist ideology and propagandists."

In David's experience, however, it was the feeling of isolation from the community as opposed to the sense of belonging that prevailed after he got released.

The same goes for prison guards, the former detainee explained, where people who are unqualified in Islam – politically or theologically – are expected to spot radicalization after an hour-long training session.

He added that the political angle and the source of person's discontent are also completely missed out by the anti-extremism policy makers.

David argues there should be more focus on "how legitimate frustrations about foreign policy can be channeled in a positive way that helps society and gives people an avenue to express it" - something that might have been overlooked in Ahmed Hassan's case.

Hassan believed he had "a duty to hate Britain," which he blamed for the death of his father in an air raid on Baghdad, when Ahmed was only 12 years old.


The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.