Terrorists, extremists and prison: An introduction to the critical issues

Terrorism is not the same as other types of crime and terrorists are not typical criminals. Inevitably many terrorists and violent extremists end up in prison where they can pose formidable challenges. Such prisoners are unusual and distinctive. As a consequence, their management can pose exceptionally difficult problems in prison and probation settings. Traditionally, however, most countries have had very few prisoners of this type. In the European Union for example, more than half of the member nations currently have no terrorist prisoners at all in their jails and most of the rest have only a handful. But when such prisoners do start to appear in the prison system their impact can be out of all proportion to their numbers.