by Steve Gallant, Telegraph
When legitimate authority weakens, informal authority fills the space
The latest figures highlighting the rise in white Muslim prisoners do not surprise me. Over the 16 years I spent in prison, I watched the situation developing first-hand.
In March 2016, I was leaning against the top-floor balcony of C Wing at HMP Gartree when five prisoners came marching up the stairs. One stopped beside me as a lookout. The other four went directly into the cell of another Muslim prisoner and gave him a sustained beating.
His alleged offence was throwing a Quran in a bin. What struck me most was not simply the violence. Four of the five attackers had converted to Islam while in prison.
Prisoners of course have the same right as anybody else to adopt a faith, and I saw religion provide genuine purpose during my sentence. But when conversion becomes associated with violence, intimidation, protection or criminal power, it is legitimate to ask a more difficult question: what exactly has someone converted to?
One of the men involved made that question particularly difficult to avoid.
He was a white, Northern working-class prisoner who had once attacked Muslim prisoners at HMP Frankland. Several years later, after converting, I encountered a very different man. His capacity for violence remained, but his identity had changed completely. He wore a prayer gown, kept a large image of Mecca in his cell and surrounded himself with material about Islamic practice.
More significantly, his violence had acquired a new justification. During one brief conversation on the landing, he told me he would do anything for his “brothers”. That transformation has stayed with me.