https://spectator.us/terror-cells-britain-prisons-became-finishing-schools-extremists/
Sometimes it appears as if, over the past 10 years, the British government has been actively trying to destroy the whole criminal justice system. It’s like an evil experiment: impose a 20 percent cut in the prisons budget, meaning a 26 percent reduction in the number of operational front line staff — then sit back and see what happens. What happened was predictable, with disastrous consequences for both inmates and the public. As a previous Conservative home secretary once said, our prisons became places that ‘make bad people worse’.
Imagine a young man like Sudesh Amman arriving in prison after his first offense. He was already a drug user, known to have a cannabis habit. He was mentally unstable and radicalized by Islamist propaganda. He entered a prison that’s usually overcrowded, frequently filthy and with too few staff struggling just to keep people alive (themselves included) from one end of the day to the other.
Inside, all of his problems are not addressed but exacerbated. In most prisons there’s a rampant drugs economy that destroys lives and drives much of the violence. It makes the task of reforming offenders near impossible. The money to be made from drugs inside is extraordinary. The predators can access their customer base without leaving their cells. Mobile phones actually designed and sold for their ability to be stored where the sun don’t shine have handy apps to transfer the cash to the dealers. It’s also convenient for the dealers that many of the captive consumers have huge unmet needs with mental health problems. Finally, charismatic hate preachers are in close proximity to credulous, violent, addicted young men in search of meaning and excitement.