By Alex Wilner Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute
Canadians are rightly shocked when police arrest fellow citizens on terrorism charges. How can it happen here, we ask? But thank goodness they’re in custody and headed for jail. At least then we’ll all be safer. Or maybe not.
The homegrown terrorism we face is a relatively new problem for Canada. Canadians have been involved with the occasional act of political violence in the past, notably the Air India bombings in 1985. But we’ve only really had two sustained problems with domestic terrorists. The FLQ and the Squamish Five (or Direct Action) used violence that shocked the nation. But that was decades ago, generated domestically over domestic causes and, in the case of the FLQ, resulted in revulsion even within the ranks of hard-core separatists. Today’s al Qaeda-inspired terrorism is transnational, increasingly common, and knows no moral boundary. And it takes hold in surprising places. Canada has imprisoned more people for supporting Islamist terrorism in the last two years than has been used to face such charges over decades.
No major problem with radicalization . . . yet
But it’s not enough to put one set of terrorists behind bars and go looking for the next. You need only look at the experience our allies in Europe and the U.S. have had to discover that once you put a terrorist in jail you have to be very careful or they might start proselytizing and recruiting among their fellow inmates. It’s disquieting how many attacks, and narrowly failed plots, involve people who spent time in prison for non-political offences and made a fateful connection behind bars. Canada doesn’t yet have a major problem with radicalization and recruitment in its prison system, but we will if we pretend it can’t happen here.
To some extent, radical and violent ideologies find an appeal among inmates for the same sorts of reasons they find an appeal among members of the general populace. Building an effective counterterrorism strategy requires that we study the specific patterns of immigration, demographics, ethnic politics, imported political traditions, and religious attitudes that correlate with the spread of, or resistance to, radical ideas in Canada. But prisoners are not a random sample of the population; they have special vulnerabilities we need to consider.
Some inmates lead disorderly lives without discipline or purpose. Others have a penchant for violent and anti-social behavior. Radical ideologies that legitimize violence may have a superficial appeal to these inmates because they offer an apparent path to self-control, self-respect, and membership in a group with a purpose and goal. Let radicals mix with the general prison population and they will use that promise of life with meaning as the bait on a hook of violence against civilians.
It’s no good denying it. The problem exists abroad and, as we send more terrorists to jail – 14 Canadians have been convicted on terrorism offenses since 2008 alone – we’ll get it here if we don’t take preemptive action.
First, Correctional Services Canada needs to study European examples and produce a Canadian version of their guides to prison radicalization for its staff that takes Canada’s specifics into account. Second, we need to keep hard-core radicals away from fellow inmates by a mix of segregating them in special facilities, separating them from the general population and one another in regular prisons, and moving them frequently so they lack the time necessary to build social networks and groom potential recruits. Third, we have to keep radical religious leaders and radical texts out of Canadian prisons.
Easier to describe than implement
We also need to be alert to those convicts who use their time in prison to reflect and repent, who can be useful allies in preventing the spread of radical ideologies by explaining to others that they’ve been there, done that, and are now profoundly sorry. And we must work on the difficult task of reintegrating prisoners into society once their terms are up, because failure to find a place in the community is a major cause of recidivism in crimes of every sort including the political.
These solutions are easier to describe than to implement. But the emerging threat of homegrown terrorism in Canada will have a new source if we don’t take the problem seriously and act to stop it before it starts.
