Ian Acheson

Is it possible to 'deradicalise' terrorists? Jonathan Hall QC, the government's terror watchdog, doesn’t think so. He may have a point, but it’s complicated. One of the institutional problems we have is a sort of misplaced arrogance based, in part, on the historic experience of counter-insurgency against violent Irish republicans. Until quite recently, the Ministry of Justice press office referred to our prison deradicalisation processes as ‘world-class.’ Hall himself only recently began looking at our distinctly Heath-Robinson terrorist risk management ‘system’ after London Bridge killer Usman Khan ran rings around it.

Use of force isn't like the movies. It’s often messy, frightening and it can go sideways very quickly. I vividly remember my first arrest as a volunteer police officer, surrounded by jeering teenagers in a seaside amusement arcade wrestling on the ground with a completely non-compliant powerfully built kid. When we eventually got the cuffs on him, it turned out he was deaf and most of his resistance was because he couldn’t understand my repeated attempts to negotiate with him.  As head of security at HMP Wandsworth, I recall standing in the centre supervising an entirely correct and proportionate restraint and relocation of a prisoner. All the staff were white. The assailant, bowed double, handcuffed, bellowing with rage and distress, was black.

This weekend is the first anniversary of the London Bridge attack. Usman Khan murdered two young people at an event he was invited to, run by the ‘Learning Together’ scheme, which is part of the University of Cambridge. The conference was designed to celebrate the achievements of people like Khan who had joined the course while serving in high-security HMP Whitemoor. Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt were stabbed to death by the dedicated Islamist, supposedly on community supervision nearly a year after being released from prison for terrorism crimes. Twelve months later, are we any closer to understanding that fatal convergence of perpetrator and victims?

Given recent stories about the police putting your door in if you have more than six people over on Christmas day, it seems almost quaint to be talking about Stop and Search as an abuse of state power. Yet the release of statistics this week that show black people are nine times more likely to have this power used against them in the street, ought to give us pause for thought. Stop and Search is an unavoidably intrusive state activity. You can be stopped by the police if they have a reasonable suspicion that you have illicit items in your possession, such as guns, drugs or equipment to be used in a burglary. When stopped, you are asked to account for your movements and a search of your outer clothing takes place.

Is the British countryside racist? BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison thinks so. 'Even a single racist event means there is work to do,' she said. 'In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.' As a native Northern Irishman who has been warmly welcomed on the fringes of southern England’s Big Empty, Dartmoor, I don't agree. It's sadly true, as Harrison points out, that there are racists everywhere in life. There are homophobes, misogynists and all sorts of intolerant people often hiding in plain sight. But these people are in the minority. And that includes in the countryside. So Harrison's performative shaming will achieve little.

Later today, two men will be sentenced for their part in the attempted murder of a prison officer at high security HMP Whitemoor in January 2020. Unfortunately, extreme violence against the men and women who put on the uniform has become almost normalised in a system beset with squalor, overcrowding and unchecked predatory behaviour. Even so, the particular characteristics of this incident are of huge concern. The two prisoners were charged under terrorism legislation.

The wheels of justice have, for once, turned with decent haste and Andrew Banks is now banged up. Banks's crime? To relieve himself at Saturday's demonstration just inches away from the memorial of PC Keith Palmer, who was murdered trying to prevent an Islamist terrorist gain access to Parliament in 2017. The contrast between supreme sacrifice and supreme idiocy can hardly be greater. My reaction, like those of many others was repulsion at what looked like a disgusting act of desecration.  Westminster Magistrates' Court was told that Banks had consumed 16 pints, hadn’t slept, didn’t notice PC Palmer's memorial and was in London to ‘defend statues’ but he couldn’t say which ones.

Covid-19 has entered our prison system. There are now at least two confirmed coronavirus cases in HMPs Manchester and Highdown in Surrey, which means staff and prisoners there are in isolation and hospital. This was inevitable, and as I have said previously, our overcrowded and under-resourced jails need special, urgent consideration. Prisons incubate many malign things behind their walls. Local prisons in particular are overcrowded and insanitary transit camps for people and viruses. So, now that prisoners have become infected, what’s to be done? The Government does have a plan.

Scared about coronavirus as you go about your everyday life? Spare a thought for those living and working inside our battered prison system. In Italy yesterday the anxiety that underpins all incarceration suddenly exploded into violence. Rioting left six prisoners dead, staff were taken hostage, dozens escaped and one prison in Poggioreale near Naples was ‘completely destroyed’. The ferocious backlash was in response to tough new measures introduced across the country to try to slow the relentless progress of Covid-19. These included a ban on the all-important prisoner family visits, which are seen by experts as dramatically increasing the risk of contagion in places almost wholly unsuited to withstand its effects.

What is the point of UN Special Rapporteurs? On Tuesday, their expert on terrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, released a report which was seized upon by the Independent and the usual dodgy ‘advocacy’ groups that speak on behalf of convicted extremist as being evidence that our counter-terrorism Prevent strategy violates international law. Rapporteurs are independent subject experts hired by the UN and given a mandate by its Human Rights Council to investigate and report on areas of concern. I have fond memories, while at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, of being lectured on our dire housing situation by one such visiting rapporteur, the Brazilian former Marxist Raquel Rolnik (Favellas anyone?).