LONDON, June 8 The blanket treatment by staff of the 10,300 Muslim prisoners in England and Wales as potential terrorists risks creating young men ready to embrace extremism on their release, the chief inspector of prisons warns on Tuesday.

Dame Anne Owers says the treatment of the rapidly growing population of Muslim prisoners as potential or actual extremists is prevalent throughout the prison system despite the fact that fewer than 1 per cent are in prison for terrorist-related offences.

The chief inspector also voices scepticism over claims by high security prison staff that gangs are forcing non-Muslim prisoners to convert to Islam through intimidation. Her report says that while conversions are common they are more likely to be the result of better food at Ramadan, the benefits of protection within a group and the discipline and structure provided by observing Islam through prayer.

The report, published on Tuesday, is based on interviews with 164 Muslim prisoners in British eight prisons and young offender institutions, combined with prisoner surveys and inspection reports over the past three years. The number of Muslims in prison in England and Wales has soared in recent years from 2,513, or 5% of the prison population, in 1994 to 6,571 or 8% in 2004 and to 10,300, more than 12%, on the latest figures.

“There has been considerable public focus on them as potential extremists and on prisons as the place where they may become radicalised, often through conversion — even though fewer than 1% are in prison for terrorist-related offences,” says the chief inspectors report.

But Owers says they are a far from homogenous group “Some are birth Muslims, and others have converted. In prisoner surveys, 40% were Asian, 32% black, 11% white and 10% of mixed heritage. One of their main grievances was, however, that staff tended to think of them as a group, rather than as individuals, and too often through the lense of extremism and terrorism — whether that was to prevent, or detect, those issues.”—Dawn/ Guardian News Service