Do prisons cause radicalization? Order, leadership, political charge and violence in two maximum security prisons
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The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, XX, 1–18
https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab122
Advance access publication 2 February 2022
Article
Do prisons cause radicalization? Order,
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leadership, political charge and violence in
two maximum security prisons
Ryan Williams1, and Alison Liebling2, ,*
Studies in Religion, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland,
1
Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge
2
CB39DA, UK
*Ryan Williams, Studies in Religion, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of
Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; ryan.williams1@uq.edu.au.
Sociological studies of prisons require expanded methodologies and interdisciplinary concepts
to address challenges posed by changing prisoner demographics and transformed geopolitics.
We aim to revitalize sociological inquiry on prisons and prisoner leadership by focussing on the
question of whether prisons cause radicalization. Our findings support those of the most persua-
sive original studies: distinct prison climates generate different hierarchies, only some of which
are violent. Through extensive fieldwork we explore the differences between a prison with high
levels of ‘political charge’, or anger, and another with less, drawing on extremist events that un-
folded over time. We contrast the dangerous dynamics of prison 1 with the more fluid, prosocial
religious explorations facilitated by prison 2, considering the implications for prison radicaliza-
tion studies.
Key Words: prison, radicalization, leadership, trust, Islam
The potential for radicalisation is there, no doubt. But there is no one from outside who will
radicalise us. That can only happen from the inside. Maximum security is more likely to prod-
uce radical prisoners because there is more violence in this environment. Yards are so polit-
ically charged these days, so guys who teach Islam teach from that perspective. They have to
in order to maintain their credibility with inmates… The potential for radicalisation must be
understood on a one-to-one basis, because nobody’s going to risk going radical in a public
place! You must remember, Islam has always been shaped by the environment in which it is
practised. Prison is no different. As long as you can keep the environment right, you can avoid
having radical Muslims. (Akeem, cited in Hamm 2013:156)
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com2 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
I don’t need to radicalise anyone in here—everyone’s already anti-authority! (Wael, prisoner,
Frankland)
Prisons are increasingly regarded as sites of radicalization; that is, they propel prisoners to-
wards ‘extreme political/religious views’ (Silke 2014:5). Prisons are ‘ripe for extremist rad-
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icalisation and recruitment’ because ‘extremists can find plenty of “angry young men”’, with
prisons enabling ‘skill transfers’ between criminality and extremism, escalating risks through
a ‘crime-terror nexus’ (Basra and Neumann 2016). There are clear cut cases supporting these
concerns, from New Folsom Prison in the US and Feltham Young Offenders Institution in the
UK (Hamm 2013), and those that haunt recent memory in Fleury-Mérogis prison in Paris and
HMP Whitemoor in the UK. These ‘spectacular few’ incidents (Hamm 2013) give legitimacy to
claims that prisons play a causal role in producing radicalization and fostering Islamist extrem-
ism. However, the self-evident explanatory and political power of the concepts of radicalization
and extremism are replacing rather than adding to empirical and theoretical understanding of
prisons and extremist violence (for exceptions, see Hamm 2013; Nivette, Eisner and Ribeaud
2017; Chantraine and Scheer 2021; Tetrault 2021).
We argue in this paper that the question of whether prisons cause radicalization needs refram-
ing in the light of sociological knowledge about prisons. Current debate about radicalization treats
prisons as uniform schools for terrorism and approaches prisoners as helpless victims, turned in-
curable fanatics, of a false ideology. Neither view aligns with empirical evidence, each perspective
perpetuating caricatures about the prison, Islamist extremism, and their combined, inevitable,
risks. We report on some empirical results from two contrasting prisons that, we argue, add to our
understanding of prison radicalisation. We show how one prison generated conflict and violence,
steep prisoner hierarchies and power-infused ‘faith’ identities. This prison also suffered from inci-
dents that looked like extremism. The other prison housed a similar population but treated pris-
oners as persons. Its more person-centred culture promoted identities that were intersectional:
faith was individualized and was less of a survival tool through group identity. This prison gener-
ated less anger and violence. In comparing them we found remarkably different climates, control
strategies, prisoner hierarchies, and different opportunities for finding dignity or redressing indig-
nities, which were linked to differences in levels of political charge and types of violence. Islam was
fiercely contested in one prison with competing self-interests and it furnished personal exploration
and fostered relationship-building in the other. We argue that these findings have important impli-
cations for conceptualizing and exploring prisoner radicalization.
Crucially, these differences emerged in a broader social, political and economic context:
prisons in the UK are being reshaped by a changing knowledge, power and resources frame-
work—what we call ‘the new precarious penology’. Building on Feeley and Simon’s ‘new
penology’ thesis, in which they describe a risk-oriented, aggregate, managerialist transform-
ation, we propose that this has intensified. It now incorporates excessive sentences, chan-
ging population demographics, austerity (leading to staff inexperience and shortages), a
declining quality of governance, and changing forms of security-oriented knowledge and
power. The stakes are higher, as violence increases, and religious or politicized forms of con-
flict move in and out between the alienated community and the disorganized prison. The
‘new precarious penology’ is a dangerous and damaging penology of failure, characterized
by de-professionalization and cynicism among staff at all levels. In practice, the new risk-
and-security-laden information flow masks many of the real problems of prison life and in-
advertently inflames prisoners in dangerous ways. The prison that managed to offset these
developments somewhat in our study was characterized by ‘old penological’ values and
practices. Staff approached management challenges as human problems rather than as
problems of an infectious ideology or recalcitrant gangs. The scope for achieving this wasDo Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 3
narrowing. New political and managerial trends make attempts to achieve ‘good order’, or
peace, in prison especially difficult.
THE STUDY AND RESE ARCH CONTE XT
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This paper draws on findings from a two-year project funded by the ESRC. The project built on
previous research on staff-prisoner relationships and changing forms of order in high-security
prisons (Sparks et al. 1996; Liebling and Arnold 2004; Liebling et al. 2011). These studies found
that different forms of penal order exist, that some were more sustainable, or legitimate, than
others (Sparks et al. 1996) but that the basic model had changed over time, so that a more distant,
new penological, and less knowledgeable management style was squeezing out a former approach
grounded in close contact, humanity, legitimacy, dynamic security and ‘intelligent trust’ (Baroness
O’Neill of Bengarve 2009; Liebling et al. 2011). There were new concerns with radicalization,
high rates of conversion to Islam, particularly among increasing numbers of Black and mixed-race
prisoners, and increased violence, often between prisoners of different faiths, in some maximum-
security prisons. Prior to this, in England and Wales, violence had reduced in high-security prisons
over a period during which a ‘legitimacy-first’ approach had been operational (Liebling 2002;
2022). Typically, in this field, there were tensions and value conflicts within the Prison Service,
and in political circles, over which model of order was effective, or desirable.
Our research methodology drew on insights from these previous studies and used an
ethnography-led approach that focussed on the location and building of trust. Prisoners and
staff welcomed the unusual emphasis on trust as one innovative way of exploring, and better
understanding, both ‘what goes on’ in high-security prisons, and risk. It was intrinsic to the re-
search design that we avoided imposing assumptions behind the term ‘radicalisation’ that might
present an impoverished view of both the complex social and institutional context of imprison-
ment, and of Islam in prison. We quickly found, however, that prisoners and staff used this term,
and their descriptions informed our empirical analysis of the prisons. We describe in this art-
icle how concepts like ‘trust’, ‘anger’ and ‘political charge’ come closer to reflecting participants’
broader and localized experiences. Trust resonated with prisoners we interviewed (see below)
who were convicted of terrorism offences, making conversations possible.
Prison scholars have shown that, contrary to common assumptions, trust exists in prison, and
is vital to their functioning despite periodic crises (Liebling 2022). We negotiated access to two
prisons which we expected to be above the low trust threshold we had found in a return research
project at Whitemoor in 2009–10 (Liebling et al. 2011). In both cases, we hoped that we might
find some trust flowing, however guarded, between staff and prisoners, rather than the tense or
‘paralysed’ relationships found at Whitemoor. ‘Intelligent trust’ meant that the right prisoners were
trusted for the right reasons: it was neither misplaced nor withheld unjustifiably. This is, of course,
a formidable challenge in a maximum-security prison. In the end, the prisons were very different
from each other: culturally, in relation to trust, and in terms of the forms of order in operation.
Our analysis below confirms the observations of early prison sociologists, who showed
how different ‘patterns of control and authority’ lead to variations in the ‘inmate social system’
(Street 1965: 45). Rigid, distant and domineering styles of control lead to ‘covert, secret and
defensive’ formations among prisoners (46). Prisons have ‘distinctive sociological characteris-
tics’ (Street 1965: 42) which shape how prosocial, or oppositional, prisoner leaders and com-
munities become (see also Schrag 1954; Grusky 1959; Wheeler 1961; Berk 1966; Garabedian
1963). Classic prison sociologists considered the ‘inmate group’ as a ‘problem-solving system’
that is ‘affected by the level of deprivation in the institution and by staff patterns of control and
authority’ (Street 1965: 40). As ‘informal organisation serves to close the gaps of the formal or-
ganisation’ (Berk 1966: 531), powerlessness is transformed into the pursuits of self-sufficiency,4 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
self-interest, and seeking alternative avenues for justice. We describe the distinctive patterns of
control and authority found in Full Sutton and Frankland below, focussing on management prac-
tices directed towards faith, the management of ‘key players’, and staff-prisoner relationships.
In both prisons, ‘hotheads’ and those with ‘nothing to lose’ presented problems for stability,
but these problems were configured and directed by the patterns of control and levels of trust
in each prison.
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The main aim of the study was to provide a description of life, experience and social organiza-
tion in two high-security prisons. The working hypotheses, based on completed research, were:
1. That high-security prisons would differ empirically in their levels of trust.
2. The presence of ‘intelligent trust’ would generate more constructive faith identities and
would lower the risk of violence.
3. Prisons would differ in the amount of ‘political charge’ they generated.
4. Different types of prisoners would be esteemed, or rise to the top of the prisoner hier-
archy, carrying influence, in these different kinds of climates.
An experienced four-person research team carried out observations and long interviews over
a period of five months each in two main high-security prisons, organised a Dialogue group
and participated in educational and religious activities in each prison. Seventy staff and 100
prisoners were interviewed in the two main sites. The interviews were digitally recorded, with
permission, and fully transcribed. The fieldwork was extensive and intense. Prisoners submitted
poetry and essays, and in one case, wrote and performed a rap for the project: ‘T-R-U-S-T, trust’
(see further Bramwell 2018).
Forty-two per cent of the interview sample were Black or mixed-race, 21 per cent were Asian,
32 per cent were white. Almost half of the sample described themselves, or were described by the
prison, as Muslim. A quarter were Christian. Their sentences were long: several were facing tariffs
of 35 years or more; two were serving natural life sentences. Several were many years beyond their
tariff, and still Category A (the highest security category). Ten of the sample had been charged
with offences against the Terrorism Act (TACT offenders). A small number had carried out acts of
extreme violence, but most had been charged with planning or supporting terrorist activity. Two
further TACT prisoners we approached for interview chose not to participate.
Towards the end of each fieldwork period, we used revised versions of a previously devel-
oped Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey with 429 staff and 332 randomly
selected prisoners including new dimensions of ‘intelligent trust’ (‘the appropriate placing of
trust, recognition of trustworthiness’), and ‘political charge’ (‘anger, indignation, and reactiv-
ity’), including items like, ‘My time in this prison has made me angry’, ‘I feel more like fighting
back than giving in, in this prison’ and ‘The prison authorities are guiltier than I am for wrong-
doing’; see Table 2). The prisoner survey was administered in focus groups by wing, allowing
time for discussion and clarification. The response rate was high.
In this paper, we describe the prisons, outline their contrasting approaches to order and
present a brief account of the differences in their ‘moral climates’ as operationalized in the
revised MQPL survey. We show, by drawing on detailed qualitative data, how social organ-
ization among prisoners differed and how identities could be mobilized and leveraged to-
wards violence. We return to the quantitative data at the end, showing that the concept of
political charge, or anger and alienation, interacted with the hierarchy and the flow of power
between prisoners. These dynamics were complex, varied in intensity by wing, and neither
‘model’ was fixed. Observable patterns were clearly identifiable during the fieldwork, how-
ever, which were supported by the quantitative analysis. The analytic process was iterative
and emergent, privileging neither the quantitative nor the qualitative sources of data. OurDo Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 5
hypotheses were supported, but we learned a great deal about the complex and contingent
dynamics involved.
T WO CONTR A STING FOR MS OF PENAL ORDER
There are five high-security prisons for prisoners serving long sentences in England and Wales.
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This study focussed on two of these: Full Sutton and Frankland. Full Sutton is in Yorkshire in the
North of England (nearest city York). It opened in 1986 and had a population of 596. Frankland
is in the Northeast of England (nearest city Durham). It opened in 1980 and had a population of
795. Both prisons held long-term prisoners convicted of serious offences, accommodated vul-
nerable (mainly sex offending) as well as ‘mainstream’ prisoners, and had a mixture of ‘square’
and galleried wing designs.
Full Sutton embodied the ‘new penology’ (Feeley and Simon 1992) in action. Staff were
‘heavy-absent’ (Crewe et al. 2014), distant from prisoners, and their emphasis was on security
and control rather than personal development or humanity. There were high levels of suspi-
cion and risk-thinking in the prison. Staff did not know or recognize their prisoners but ex-
perienced them as dangerous and unfathomable (see Liebling 2015). Prisoners complained
about overcontrol, oppressive security, favouritism, discrimination, cultural insensitivity, lack
of life support and lack of progression. Black, Asian, mixed-race and Muslim prisoners felt sig-
nificantly less well treated than white and non-Muslim prisoners (‘They take the piss out of my
culture’, ‘staff mock my food’). We observed, and measured, differences between wings. Overall
at Full Sutton, professionalism related to vigilant security and control, the meeting of targets,
proactive rule-following and risk management. Prisoners in Full Sutton said, ‘you feel like a stat-
istic’. Being in the prison felt heavy.
The culture at Frankland prison, on the other hand, was ‘old penology’ or ‘old school’ (Liebling
and Kant 2016). Staff were confident in using talk and relationships as the foundation of dynamic
security and legitimate order. Welfare and rehabilitation were animating ideas in language and
practice throughout the prison. Staff were ‘heavy-present’: there in numbers and engaging with
prisoners. They knew, and recounted, the backstories of the prisoners on their wing. The Governor
at the time was (unusually) a former senior probation officer. His main message to staff was that
people, rather than performance targets mattered. Professionalism at Frankland related to the de-
velopment or progress of prisoners and high levels of contact. Staff used discretion and placed trust
appropriately (see below). Prisoners in Frankland said, at least at times, ‘you feel like a person’. It
had a more ‘Thou’ than ‘It’ culture (Buber 2010): staff at Frankland showed awareness of prison-
ers’ complex narratives and ‘whole person’ identities. Despite some ‘heaviness’, Frankland had an
overall ‘lighter’ and more individualized climate than Full Sutton, and significantly higher scores
on relational (including care) dimensions in the MQPL survey (see Table 1). Frankland also had
significantly higher Professionalism scores, including on the typically very low scoring dimension,
Bureaucratic Legitimacy. This dimension captured the experience of being able to find a way out
of high security or feel like a person in the system.
Policing styles varied accordingly. Staff at Frankland handled prison disciplinary charges in con-
structive ways (‘now go and rebuild your relationship with this officer’), while staff at Full Sutton
governed-at-a-distance, through security information reporting. ‘Policing and security’ was scored
higher at Frankland, despite heavier but more distant policing at Full Sutton. Staff at Full Sutton
tended to ‘look at faith through a risk lens’ (Liebling et al. 2011)—conflating Islam with danger.
Faith practices became paradoxically both a ‘no go area’ for staff (as at Whitemoor) and yet a site
requiring management grip. We illustrate these dynamics, and their significance, below.
Full Sutton and Frankland generated different degrees and types of violence that, we argue,
were shaped by their institutional climates. Our main fieldwork at Full Sutton began after three6 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
Table 1 MQPL dimension means HMP Full Sutton and Frankland
Dimension Full Sutton, n = 167 Frankland, n = 165 p
Harmony Dimensions
Respect/courtesy 2.86 3.19 ***
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Staff-prisoner relationships 2.71 3.06 ***
Humanity 2.61 2.92 **
Decency 2.57 2.83 **
Care for the vulnerable 2.91 3.14 **
Help and assistance 2.86 3.00 ϯ
Professionalism Dimensions
Staff professionalism 2.84 3.14 ***
Bureaucratic legitimacy 2.00 2.34 ***
Fairness 2.42 2.69 **
Organization and consistency 2.71 2.84 ns
Security dimensions
Policing and security 3.25 3.45 ***
Prisoner safety 3.24 3.26 ns
Outcome dimensions
Personal development 2.59 2.85 **
Personal autonomy 2.64 2.81 *
Well-being 2.45 2.75 **
New dimensions
Trust 2.65 2.85 *
Feeling intelligently trusted 2.57 2.91 ***
Political charge 2.61 2.94 ***
ϯ < 0.1; * < 0.05; ** < 0.01; *** < 0.001. All dimensions are scored positively, using a 5-point Likert scale. Scores below 3 represent
negative evaluations by prisoners; scores of 3 or above represent positive evaluations.
prisoners took a member of staff hostage and threatened to behead him. The hostage-taking
occurred days after the murder of a young soldier, Lee Rigby, by two radical Muslim men in
May 2013 in Woolwich, London. We had carried out pilot research two months prior to these
events, so we knew the prison empirically. There were clear signs that a large group of prisoners
were feeling angry and alienated, that staff-prisoner relationships were tense (particularly on the
wing where the incident occurred) and that there was ‘politics between religions’ at Full Sutton
(prisoner).
Staff with military backgrounds or connections felt the increasingly politicized environment
inside: ‘I don’t like it widely known, because where I work, it is all militants and terrorists, but my
son is in the military. He has been to Afghanistan and Iraq’ (George, staff, Full Sutton). Prisoners
reported staff ‘stirring up conflict’ between Muslims and non-Muslims. Staff expressed anxiety
about losing control of the prison (‘there are too many Muslims here’)(Williams 2021). This
furthered a polarized climate in which Muslim prisoners felt ‘targeted’, servicing a narrative of
us-versus-them that one prison governor in Full Sutton described, prior to the hostage-taking,
as something ‘that we need to disempower’ (Alex, staff, Full Sutton).
Many prisoners experienced these tensions as racialised, leading to spiralling circles of distrust
and suspicion. The over-representation of Muslim prisoners who were ‘lifted’ and placed into sep-
arate units for disruptive and difficult to manage prisoners (Close Supervision Centres (CSCs)),Do Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 7
Table 2 Political charge and intelligent trust: item and mean dimension scores
FS FL
Political charge: anger and indignation; reactivity
My time in prison has made me angry 2.77 3.10*
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The prison authorities are guiltier than I am for wrongdoing 2.77 2.94
I feel more like fighting back than giving in, in this prison 2.81 3.13*
I dislike this prison’s treatment of people like me 2.47 2.73*
I feel shame for what I have done to get here 2.54 3.63***
The level of suspicion in this prison is too high 2.21 2.51*
I have become more tolerant of (other) faith groups in this prison 3.33 3.35
The problems we are facing in this prison need action now 1.99 2.05
Dimension mean score 2.61 2.94***
Intelligent trust: alignment of trust with, and efforts to grow and
recognize, trustworthiness
The right people are trusted for the right reasons in this prison 2.79 2.91
I feel recognized as the person I am in this prison 2.58 3.02***
I have opportunities to show I am trustworthy in this prison 2.70 3.19***
This prison is good at placing trust in prisoners 2.21 2.49*
Dimension mean score 2.57 2.91***
ϯ < 0.1; * < 0.05; ** < 0.01; *** < 0.001. All dimensions are scored positively, using a 5-point Likert scale. Scores below 3 represent
negative evaluations by prisoners; scores of 3 or above represent positive evaluations.
suggested to some prisoners that power was structured along racialised lines. It was ‘Muslims
who are suffering’ (Assad, Full Sutton). Prisoners’ claims of discrimination were liable to be dis-
missed as illegitimate and ideological: ‘it becomes difficult to decipher prisoners who internally
feel this way from those who recount their group’s script’ (Maryam, specialist staff). Friction
points went unaddressed. Grievances gained traction, a governor observed: ‘Almost by our own
procedures we’re reinforcing what some of these guys are trying to portray we do…sometimes
our leadership [is] reinforcing the problem’ (Alex, staff, Full Sutton). Violence from ‘hot-headed
prisoners’ was difficult to control in such an environment, as we describe below in discussing the
necessity of the ‘powerful group’ to the ‘survivability’ of life in Full Sutton at the time.
Frankland reported three historic episodes of violence that had shaped its institutional mem-
ory, two of which were shown to the research team on entry to the prison, captured by CCTV,
as part of our orientation. The first was an assault on staff by a prisoner, the second was an attack
on a Muslim prisoner by other prisoners that added to the prison’s reputation as a ‘racist jail’, and
the third involved three Muslim prisoners being ‘run off the wing’ after exercising control in the
kitchens. There was sociological texture behind this violence.
THE SOCIAL WORLD OF THE NEW ‘PRECARIOUS’ PENOLOGY:
FULL SU TTON
‘Lifting’ key players and ‘going invisible’
They see it like a disease that they need to control or kill off. If I hang about with Muslims, I am
radicalising them. If I hang around non-Muslims I am trying to convert them, radicalise them.
You can’t win. (Assad, prisoner, Full Sutton)8 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
We’ve had issues... Anything concerted like that, where you’re risking the control and order of
the establishment, there has to be a consequence. And the Governor will be robust. That’s the
right thing to do, because we’re into high stakes here. (Frank, staff, Full Sutton)
Staff in Full Sutton were pro-active in managing the two risks of Islamic extremism and the
Muslim gang. Power flowed through the chaplaincy and against influential prisoners (Williams
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and Liebling 2018; Williams 2021). Assad, for example, was actively encouraged by a governor
to return to prayers to end the boycott of Friday prayers. A boycott began after the chaplaincy
was politicized by a sessional Muslim chaplain who called for prayers for the family of Lee Rigby,
triggering three Muslims to walk out. They later took a member of staff hostage.
when people stopped going, governors were begging me to go to Friday service…who has
heard of this? I’ve never seen a governor beg me to go…I was like, wow you lot are proper
lame, man. But that’s...how they are... (Assad, prisoner, Full Sutton)
The chaplaincy became a site of control: ‘they took down everyone’s name that didn’t go’
(Kanye, prisoner, Full Sutton). Relations with prison chaplains became strained (‘you’re not an
officer…you’re not here to…get this person lifted or to get this person taken to the seg’).
Governing through ‘key players’ had ironic consequences. Staff in Full Sutton relied on in-
fluential prisoners for order, especially when it broke down, but they simultaneously punished
that influence. Kanye described a request by a governor: ‘“try and sort this out”...but then…you
use that influence…against me, you’re saying…this assault couldn’t have happened without my
say’. Harvey similarly described a request by staff during a ‘sit in’ where prisoners refused to lock
up out of protest at a broken heating system with temperatures below freezing. Despite his re-
luctance, he helped everyone get back into their cells: ‘I was in the Seg for a month, under the
suspicion of being a ringleader’.
‘Lifting’ prisoners was a heavy tactic to maintain order and ‘get the balance right’ (‘disperse,
disperse, disperse’, Assad), but it meant missed opportunities to improve the legitimacy of pro-
cesses or to find better ways to handle trouble.
Nick, an ‘old school’ officer at Full Sutton, criticized the practice of lifting prisoners from an
‘ivory tower’ of security intelligence that operated at a distance and was devoid of the know-
ledge and experience of frontline staff: sometimes they got it right, he remarked, but other times
they were wrong (‘what the hell has he done? He’s not involved in any of this’). He expressed
frustration (‘sorry about that, lad’) and felt the system had ‘broken down’.
Assad described how the dispersal method ‘backfired’ because now he knew so many people
in the prison system and this made him look even more influential. Pre-emptive control dis-
rupted the flow of information as prisoners sought to fly under the radar and turn ‘invisible’.
Prisoners were alert to the need to avoid ‘status’ in the eyes of the institution, as Jon described
in Frankland:
You don’t want no status. Because… it’s gonna mess you up. The status is what puts you on
paper to them, makes officers look at you in this certain light, what’s not gonna change. So
straight away that’s bad. It makes you in the jail, listen, this is that guy, innit, so at the end of the
day... different repercussions come. I: You’re describing almost an effort to be invisible? R:
That’s how you need to be … just fully invisible. ( Jon, prisoner, Frankland)
In Full Sutton, there was a heightened urgency for invisibility in everyday life and in ordinary
behaviours (Liebling and Williams 2018). Counter-Terrorism (CT) staff went ‘invisible’ too.
It was a running joke among prisoners that there was no counter-terrorism department in theDo Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 9
prison. CT staff kept their roles hidden when speaking to prisoners, but secrecy inflamed dis-
trust as information flows and communication were disrupted. As prisoners and staff sought
invisibility, suspicion and uncertainty spiralled, reducing relationships on both sides to game-
playing (Liebling et al. 2020).
Problem-solving systems: ‘Things to prove’, ‘nothing to lose’, and ‘backlash’
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Prisoners shared a sense of urgency with staff in controlling the problem of violence in Full
Sutton. Stability on the wings was more desirable than conflict:
Not everyone in here is gangsters …everyone wants to live in peace, man, you understand?
You might get the 2% who have got things to prove, innit, but those people don’t last long.
(Andy, prisoner, Full Sutton)
Prisoners described a desire to live in peace and prisons as ‘kettles boiling over’ with people
who were ready to ignite: ‘They are too hot-headed and they will go and do things for their own
personal gain…it has to be stopped.’ (Omar, prisoner, Full Sutton).
Those with long sentences were a particular source of instability, as Moez described: ‘They
are extremists under the Terrorism [Act], they’ve got nothing to lose. [They]…got 40 years. He
has just started his sentence.’ (Moez, Full Sutton). Life-crushing sentences made the problem
of disorder and unpredictability more prescient: ‘if a man’s doing 30 years you can’t wag your
finger and tell him to do stuff because he won’t’ (Alex, staff, Full Sutton).
Hotheadedness brought ‘backlash’ from staff: ‘It’s a ripple effect on everyone...because of
those actions of maybe three or four Muslims, like with the hostage thing, it’s affected the whole
Muslim population in prisons, it has’ (Kanye, prisoner, Full Sutton).
A prisoner-organised model of order grew out of distrust of staff and the need for safety:
‘Informal organisation serves to close the gaps of the formal organisation’ (Berk 1966:531).
Self-sufficiency filled a trust deficit between prisoners and staff. The circularity of the prison’s
complaint process was bypassed by prisoners: ‘If you have any problem …come talk to us, we’ll
represent your issue. You have two wing reps, and we have like the wise man counsels, who will
speak to the leader’ (Saleem, prisoner, Full Sutton).
Prisoner-led conflict resolution, inflected with Islamic language (Emir and surah council),
was considered, by Muslims and non-Muslims, as the only, if precarious, source of stability:
‘When we are unified you’ll be more safer, and we are safer’ (Saleem, prisoner, Full Sutton);
‘there is one gang at the moment. But having said that, it is not bad at the moment...a lot of them
are quite sensible. They tend to like to sit and talk about what they do, before they do it, and a lot
of it is justifiable to a certain extent’ (Harvey, prisoner, Full Sutton).
Prisoner self-organization worked in urgent and concealed ways to provide goods that were
considered inaccessible through the regime: safety and a fair process. On occasion, this mech-
anism became retributive and ‘tacitly and unintentionally permitted certain seedier aspects
of prison life’ (Williams 2018: 743). Drugs, bullying, and retributive violence could operate
‘under the Muslim banner’ (Alex, staff, Full Sutton) looking like the work of a homogenous
Muslim gang. But such language concealed other realities: necessity, safety from staff ‘backlash’
and ‘survivability’.
Prisoner self-organization was interconnected with a mode of prison governance that was
distant and distrusting, ‘shaped by the structurally conditioned options available to persons cre-
ating a social existence within the constraints imposed upon them’ (Thomas et al. 1980:49). It
served to ‘close the gaps’ in formal institutional processes, but incompletely. The parallel system
bypassed one that would inevitably be used against them. Prisoners developed their own solu-
tions to problems and found their own tools, including violence.10 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
‘Are you a brother?’ surviving, ‘pushing back’ and contesting Islam
Joining a group was important for when ‘it goes off ’: ‘When they see it flip…and people getting
stabbed and they think…how can I avoid getting myself involved in that?’ Being a Muslim in
Full Sutton meant: ‘I’ve got a group around me, instead of being an individual’ (David, prisoner,
Full Sutton). The vulnerable could be exploited:
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a lot of shorter sentence kids…now go to Friday prayers…will read the Qur’an …because
that’s the only way they’re going to survive here…that protection comes at a price, and that
will be when there’s friction with another group, or another individual, and they’ll be in-
structed to carry out an assault. And they’ll be so scared they’ll do it. (Stan, staff, Full Sutton)
The brotherhood, however, was a site of power-struggles and ‘character contests’ (Liebling et al.
2020). Rodney described pushing back against an influential person on the wing who wanted to
use the Muslim group as a power base:
[Omar said to me, ‘If you] call yourself a Muslim you are supposed to back us brothers’.
I went ‘No I am not, I am supposed to correct things, when brothers are doing things wrong.’
(Rodney, Full Sutton)
Rodney used threats of violence against a ‘big figure’ on the wing who wanted to leverage Islam
and the ‘brotherhood’ for violence: ‘I am going to really fucking hurt you’. The prisoner was
transferred off the wing. Violence, or threat, was the only option against violence and those want-
ing to use the ‘brotherhood’ in a self-serving way. Moez similarly described resisting a Muslim
prisoner who was ‘behaving like bin Laden’: ‘I am sick and tired [of] hearing the “scholars” say
this da da da...they are full of bollocks. Show me what the Qur’an said and I show where the
Qur’an said it is a sin to harm yourself, let alone blow yourself up’ (Moez, prisoner, Full Sutton).
Such challenges came with significant personal risk as it could signal going against the peer
group. Andrew told us, from a special unit in Frankland where he was relocated for his own
safety: ‘I won’t give into them’. Pushing back and refusing to give in came at significant personal
cost in Full Sutton, where contesting Islamic extremism involved sticking your neck out and
drawing attention to yourself among staff who were highly alert to extremism:
This… blowing yourself up and attacking everybody I, sort of, sit there and think, you know,
it’s my responsibility to counter them... But again, I am seeming the one that’s been radicalised,
not I am the one that’s trying to de-radicalise somebody else. (Abdal, prisoner, Full Sutton)
Staff perceived all ‘theological conversation’ as a ‘radicalising act’, heightening the costs of speak-
ing out against extremism and self-interest. For the vulnerable, it was easier to join the group, even
with indifference to Islamic practice, as it offered protection in Full Sutton. One prisoner described
changing his registration to ‘Muslim’ upon entry to the prison ‘because it suits’, though he felt
‘Church of England’ and ate bacon because he ‘wants to’: [He] would change back in another es-
tablishment because ‘he doesn’t think being Muslim would go down well with parole, they’d think
he’s an extremist’ (fieldwork notes). There were complex interactions between forms of order, how
prisoners resolved problems, and the available options for making prison survivable.
THE SOCIAL WORLD OF OLD PENOLOGY: FR ANKL AND
Building order through relationships and prisoner narratives
Frankland staff relied on forms of order that were located on the wings and built through rela-
tionships rather than determined by intelligence. Senior security staff described strategies toDo Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 11
resettle prisoners on the wing rather than reverting to lifting or dispersing. Segregation was a
temporary means to assist resettlement into Frankland, which opened up opportunities to dis-
rupt the problematic prisoner narrative and offered opportunities for staff to build relationships.
Sometimes this strategy failed, like when a prisoner relocation brought two prisoners together
who had a historical dispute in another prison and they immediately ‘came to blows’—an ‘un-
fortunate oversight’ ( Janelle, staff). There was trust in frontline staff to manage prisoners dy-
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namically. Mostly, this worked.
In stark contrast with the invisible CT staff in Full Sutton, in Frankland CT staff would per-
sonally introduce themselves to TACT offenders and sit in on Friday prayer services in ways that
were intentionally visible but also clearly demarcated with a low wood divider that respected
the space for worship. Staff acknowledged that extremism was not a ‘Muslim problem’, but in-
cluded right-wing extremism, and saw that the real dangers emerged when the dynamics were
polarised.
Compared to Full Sutton, Frankland’s prison chaplaincy did not serve as a site of governance
but was comparatively autonomous from institutional control, organizing groups to meet with a
wide array of ethnic and religious affiliations, including a Rastafari group and a Traveller group.
We describe the significance of these alternative possibilities for group identity below.
Aikif described how staff in Frankland trusted him ‘to a certain level’, for example, allowing
him to stay in his cell during a search and ‘carry on making my coffee’. It was ‘little things, like
staff ensuring that the search dog did not go on his bed, that made Aikif feel that trust was in-
vested at the right level and in the right people for the right reasons. Staff were considered reli-
able: ‘whatever I ask him to do, you know, if I’ve got a problem, he’ll always sort it out...really he
does go above and beyond’.
Aiden’s work with a specialist showed: ‘she actually gave a damn about me, so I trusted her.’
Humour was received and shared appropriately, ‘they were spot on, the staff ’, Simon observed,
when, during a rock concert, a pair of boxer shorts were thrown to mimic fandom, and this be-
came a point of lightness in relationships during security procedures (‘You haven’t got any boxer
shorts in your pocket?’, Simon was asked during a rub-down search).
Problem-solving: mentoring hotheads, stepping in, and flat hierarchies
Disputes in Frankland were settled primarily on a one-to-one basis rather than through the elab-
orate prisoner structure found in Full Sutton. Brandon described an individual approach to set-
tling problems: ‘If you’re mugging me off in front of everyone I’ve either got to say, “Come on,
let’s go to the cell and sort it out”, or do something there and then. I’m not the type that’s going
to go away and plan something’,
Hotheads were a problem in Frankland too, but solutions were found through a process of
mentorship, grounded in one to one dialogue, that helped younger prisoners acclimatize:
You do get your few in here. One who’s...like I said, still in that Gang Bang mode, and can’t get
out of it. So I have a clash with him there. And he’s a lot younger than me, so I always try and
put my arm round him, try to say to him, ‘Look, you don’t have to be about that in here...’ He
just needs to grow up a little. (Brandon, prisoner, Frankland)
There was less pressure for young prisoners to ‘prove themselves through retaliation’ in
Frankland (Randall, prisoner, Full Sutton).
Prisoners would step in to intervene in conflicts. Wael described two prisoners having an
argument over football: ‘One of the “prisoners ended up grabbing the other by the neck, and
some man pulled them apart and said to the guys, “what are [you] doing, you’re supposed to be
friends”’. Resolving conflicts relied on prisoners stepping in, an act of sticking your neck out that
was too destabilizing and risky in Full Sutton.12 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
The prisoner hierarchy was structurally different. The structure at Full Sutton required a for-
mal leader or Emir, whereas leadership on the wings in Frankland was transmitted by ‘big char-
acters’. As Simon described, these ‘characters’ were not necessarily ‘powerful’ or ‘influential’, but
they changed the character or personality of the wing:
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…wings are constantly changing…it’s a constant changing environment…Like, for example,
[ John], he’s like this on the wing and you know when he goes off the wing…a lot of people
will be saying, ‘Oh, it’s not the same without [ John]…it’s not an influential thing, but he’s
quite a big character.
A ‘big character’ could hold power in reserve, like the best prison staff. A space was open for ‘old
heads’, ‘real men’ or the prosocial, to operate in. They were spotted and nurtured by staff (they
were not immune to racial favouritism, however). The prisoner above described a fundamental
message of prison sociology: that roles outlive individuals (even though individuals matter);
they are socially produced by structures of power and control. Prisons get the leadership qual-
ities they support. Distinct prison climates produce certain opportunities for power struggles
and violence through the need to join a group for survival. We explore this possibility next.
Enabling identity pluralism? Surviving outside the group
In Frankland, there was less pressure to join a group or conform to peer group expectations
that cut along hard territorial lines. Aikif described how people ‘behaved differently’ in different
prisons, because of fear, and how he was at ease in Frankland:
I behaved differently in Long Lartin...just, out of fear, basically, because the last thing I want to do is
get done in, so when they would say, you know, it’s time to pray or something, I’d say I’ve just got to
get on the phone, or I’d lie and say…‘yeah, I’ve already prayed’, when I haven’t. But then I’ve come
here and ‘have you prayed?’ No I haven’t, I don’t want to’, it’s OK, and I’m quite happy with saying
that, you know, because there’s less of them here. And a lot of people, they make out that they hate
non-believers...but then they’re best friends with them here… (Aikif, prisoner, Frankland)
It was easier to be a non-practising Muslim in Frankland with fewer pressure-cooker dynamics
of joining the ‘Muslim group’ for safety. Similarly, Abdal described a hybrid Muslim identity:
‘I’m a Scientologist…it doesn’t conflict with my religion’. Another Muslim prisoner, found in a
Quaker meeting, described himself happily as a hybrid Quaker-Muslim.
These hyphenated identities were unique to Frankland and were enabled through an institu-
tion that did not govern by identity.
A chaplain who led a Rastafarian group with ‘Black Afro-Caribbean lads’ described how wel-
come the group was, given that they had felt ‘a bit lost’, having had ‘pressure to convert to Islam
because they’re black and didn’t want to, but didn’t feel that mainstream Christianity was where
they were at’ (Garret, chaplain, Frankland). There was no Rastafarian chaplain, so a Christian
chaplain stepped in, creating an alternative space for Black identity that was not with the Muslim
group. These activities, a chaplain remarked, ‘built bridges’. A Traveller group was supported by
the Frankland chaplaincy too. A prison band consisted of a TACT offender, another Muslim,
and Catholic and Protestant prisoners (as well as a prison chaplain). The pressures to join the
biggest group to survive and to conform to expectations around ‘Muslim’ behaviours were less-
ened through the availability of alternative identity outlets, fostered, in part, through the chap-
laincy, and staff and managers who permitted these activities.
Damian, who identified with the Rastafari faith, described the appeal of Islam in other
high-security prisons: ‘it’s just two systems fighting each other’, the prison service againstDo Prisons Cause Radicalization? • 13
Muslims. His wing in Frankland, by contrast, was ‘calm’: ‘there are Muslims here who don’t
want to jump into the radical thing, they want to be more relaxed…want it to be a cool place
for people and don’t want contention’. ‘Others want to keep up the numbers and put their foot
down and fight the front up here,’ Damian described, and he told them to ‘relax, man’. It was eas-
ier to ‘relax’ in Frankland. Staff were ‘present’ in the negotiation of order.
Avoiding a group came with significant challenges even in Frankland. To progress from ‘Cat
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A’ down to ‘Cat B’ (the prison service’s formal process of security risk reduction that contributes
to parole), Aiden, as a TACT offender, needed to demonstrate that he disengaged from terror-
ism by disassociating from his peer group. He described how these criteria for downgrade were
only possible through a ‘stroke of luck’ that came at exceptional personal risk: ‘if the Muslims
hadn’t fallen out with me…at the time they fell out…[when] I was thinking…it’s not a good
situation’ (Aiden, prisoner, Frankland). His progression relied on putting himself in a position
of vulnerability. In Full Sutton, the Muslim peer-group emerged to fill the gaps in the institu-
tion so that joining was sometimes necessary, posing significant challenges for disengaging. As
Jamaal acknowledged in considering his own sentence progression challenges as a TACT of-
fender: ‘I know I have to work maybe 10 times harder than a normal prisoner’ ( Jamaal, prisoner,
Full Sutton).
Frankland, with its lighter and more individualized approach to power, did not rule out strug-
gles for domination: we witnessed a riot against three Muslim prisoners on CCTV in our orien-
tation to the prison. The balance of power was continually contested. Like Sparks et al. (1996),
we found that distinct forms of order had advantages and drawbacks. In our case, they were
linked to different risks.
CONCEPTUALISING AND ME A SURING VIOLENCE: POLITICAL
CHARGE, INTELLIGENT TRUST, AND THE RISK S OF
R ADICALIZ ATION
As part of this study, we operationalized and investigated the concept of political charge: a term
which is used loosely, or interchangeably, with other terms, like ‘political aggression’ in the polit-
ical science and international relations literature, inspired by Mark Hamm’s use of the term, and
the clear, new and widespread feelings of anger and alienation found at Whitemoor in 2009–10.
The risks of anger, alienation, loss of meaning and violence were more pressing, present, meas-
urable and meaningful than the also real, but less widespread and identifiable risks of radic-
alization: a ‘formidable’ but ungrounded category (see Sassen 2013). We know from detailed
empirical research that across cultures, people feel anger when they are treated unjustly and
unequally (Karstedt 2002). Anger is a ‘moral emotion’ that can be experienced individually and
collectively. It drives sometimes drastic ‘action impulses’ and causes changes in beliefs (Karstedt
2002: 308). It often leads to violence, although it may also lead to legitimate political action
(Fairchild 1977). In political or terrorist violence, anger is often more relevant than ideology.
Available, often convincing, narratives of injustice and marginalization are taken up by already
willing perpetrators and moulded to existing feeling (Karstedt 1999). The more injustice exists,
the easier it becomes to create and mobilize such narratives.
We conducted this analysis aware that high political charge can lead to different kinds of
negative outcomes besides the elusive risk of radicalization. On the other hand, our findings
were revealing (see Table 2, showing the items). We put to one side, for now, important distinc-
tions between ‘apt’ and ‘destructive’ anger (Srinivasan 2018).
Full Sutton had significantly higher levels of political charge than Frankland. Both were high,
but Full Sutton’s were worryingly so. Forty-six percent of prisoners at Full Sutton agreed or
strongly agreed that ‘my time in prison has made me angry’ compared to 31% at Frankland.14 • The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, Vol. XX, No. XX
Higher proportions of prisoners disagreed with these items at Frankland. It is significant, then,
that expressions and policing of religious faith were distinctive in these different climates. At
Frankland, in a somewhat less charged atmosphere, religious expression was not tied to peer
group loyalty. Faith and power became fused in Full Sutton, identities narrowed, and challen-
ging extremist views and self-serving action came with high costs. Sparks et al. (1996) found
that violence manifested in different ways in their two prisons, with ‘thicker’ dynamics to vio-
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lence in the more liberal prison (Long Lartin) and ‘thin’ interpersonal violence in the more
tightly controlled prison (Albany). Our findings reflected a new era, showing steep violence in
a climate of ‘thin’ religious identities where control was high (Full Sutton), and interpersonal
and swift violence in Frankland where ‘thick and fluid’ identities were retained. New conceptual
models will be required to describe and understand these dynamics (as Sparks and others have
recently argued, 2022).
We also operationalized the concept of ‘intelligent trust’. Significant differences were also
found here, with prisoners at Full Sutton reporting significantly lower levels. Just over half
(51.9%) of the prisoners at Frankland felt they had ‘opportunities to show I am trustworthy
in this prison’, compared to 25.7% at Full Sutton. These are very significant differences. Almost
twice as many prisoners felt ‘recognised as the person I am in this prison’ at Frankland (39.8%,
compared to 20% at Full Sutton). Being treated as (only and always) dangerous and untrust-
worthy was experienced as dehumanizing, demoralising and disrespectful (see Liebling and
Williams 2018). The scores on both political charge and intelligent trust were racially and re-
ligiously configured, so that at Full Sutton, the score on political charge for Muslim prisoners
was 2.49 (a dangerously low score). For Black and mixed-race prisoners, regardless of religious
identity, the score was also perilously low, at 2.45 (at Frankland the scores were 2.60 and 2.64
respectively). The score on intelligent trust for Muslim prisoners at Full Sutton was 2.20. For
Black and mixed-race prisoners, regardless of religious identity, the score was 2.24 (at Frankland
the scores were 2.78 and 2.64 respectively). There were palpable feelings of intense anger and
alienation on some wings, at Full Sutton in particular, and in some of our interviews. As we
found at Whitemoor, this motivated self-serving and power-infused Muslim identities that con-
tained hatred and push-back. Anger narrowed identities. It also damaged well-being (see Table
1). The appeal of politicized ideologies was greater.
In Table 1, earlier, we showed that the moral climate in general was poorer at Full Sutton.
Prisoners’ accounts of their experience were laden with feelings of injustice about indifference
and inhumanity. In an exploratory regression model using the data from both prisons, variations
in levels of political charge were explained, directly and indirectly, by differences in levels of
humanity, decency, bureaucratic legitimacy, staff-prisoner relationships, fairness and intelligent
trust (see Figure 1).1 Frankland staff did not operate with ‘blind faith’ (D’Cruz 2019) but they
had a professional capacity to doubt their own risk judgments, and find out more from col-
leagues, specialists or prisoners themselves: an ‘epistemic’ as well as professional virtue (Cassam
2021). They were aware of the personhood of prisoners, and of the possibility of trustworthi-
ness. This was in contrast to the tendency in Full Sutton to be both distant and certain. This form
of ‘closed-mindedness’ was experienced as alienating and oppressive. In the fieldwork, we could
see that on wings where talk and dialogue were not eclipsed by fear, and staff were ‘in the mix’,
prisoners often moved away from both violent ideologies and violent behaviour. The most ser-
ious incidents we encountered during this project, including the hostage taking, took place on
the wings with the lowest scores on the above dimensions. Was this an act of extremist violence?
It was certainly charged.
1 The overall model explained 65% of the variation in political charge (R2). Direct contributions made by independent dimen-
sions are shown under arrows.You can also read
