There is no question that Britain’s prisons are becoming more violent. Figures published last week show assaults on staff and prisoners at record levels. The Muslim charity Maslaha has claimed that force used by prison staff to quell the rising tide is fuelled by “Islamophobia” and is a result of the racialised policing of the landings across eight of the nine prisons it surveyed. Is this an accurate or fair representation of the problem?
