Jo Stevens MP, Labour’s Shadow Prisons Minister, said:

“This damning admission from Michael Gove and National Offender Management Service to the Justice Select Committee today highlights failures at every level to properly assess increasing extremism in prisons and plan for the impact.

“Evidence of complacency and a complete absence of thinking about key issues such as Jihadi fighters returning from the Middle East is astonishing.

"There has been widespread concern about radicalisation in our prisons and with overcrowding and violence at record levels, the likelihood of increasing violence is obvious.”

Ends

Notes to editor

·         In December last year, the Ministry of Justice was forced to admit that prison officers have been receiving less than one hour’s worth of Prevent awareness training each, stating that between “April 2015 and September 2015, 4,100 hours of training were delivered to over 4,900 staff in prisons directly managed by NOMS”. (Hansard, Written Question HL4381, December 8^th 2015, http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Lords/2015-12-08/HL4381/)

·         It was also revealed last year that the Minsitry of Justice had no idea of the true extent of radicalisation in prisons because the department does not collect data on the number of extremists in prisons (Daily Mail, October 19^th 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3278066/How-prisoners-radicalised-bars.html)