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| Terrorism and Training: An Essential Tie |
| By Meghan Mandeville, News Research Reporter |
| Published: 09/20/2004 |
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Homeland security and protecting the U.S. against terrorist attacks continue to be main priorities for both national and local law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, including corrections. As inmates with potential ties to terrorism are being confined in the nation's prisons, corrections can be play an important role in collecting information and identifying terrorist threats. Recently, The Corrections Connection Network News discussed this issue with Bill Sturgeon, Director of The Center for Rural Preparedness & Emergency Services. He talked about terrorism and extremist recruitment in the nation's prisons and what he believes corrections agencies need to do to better monitor STGs in their institutions. Q: What are your thoughts on extremist recruitment in the nation's prisons? Sturgeon: Recruiting terrorist or extremists is not anything new in the nation's prisons - that has been going on [and] white supremacy groups have been doing that for years. [Also], with other ethnic [and] religious groups, that's something that has been going on for an awfully long time. [But] it could be on the upswing because there are so many different groups today. The prisons are a microcosm of society. That's all you have to look at. It could be [growing] simply because of the [many different] factions in society today. If you are looking for Islamic people [with ties to terrorism], which seems to be the current rage, even if [officers are] looking [for people] of Middle Eastern descent, they might not look Middle Eastern. It' s [important] to develop staff to be more responsive and more observant to what is going on. Sturgeon: I think you have to be careful [when] singling out any single group. It's been my experience in corrections that if you look at one group, another group will flare up and [cause problems]. You need to be very careful of that whole thing. I have been preaching this since 9/11. One of the other things that I would do is be much more familiar as part of training of the staff on the Islamic religion. I think, again, there's a lot of mystery and mysticism around it. We have the white supremacist groups and a lot of them are based on a fanatical interpretation of the Bible. This could be the same with a lot of these Islamic groups. I think that just because someone is Muslim, or practices Islam, doesn't mean that they should be singled out for special care unless they have done something else to [create] suspicion or at least reasonable suspicion to give them some additional surveillance. I think religious services should work with the local Islamic community and a trusted Imam to help establish the actual religious parts of things. I think once you start singling people out, you are making some mistakes because if you single out one group for special attention, I will guarantee, in a correctional environment, another group will flare up. When correctional administrators tend to identify certain groups as bad guys, that can sometimes can be interpreted by the inmates as an informal permission for the inmates to kind of carry the law themselves. You are going to have some whack job inmates who think that they are doing you a favor by persecuting those inmates from those groups. I think correctional administrators are very good at identifying issues. I think today what has to be kind-of refined and maybe even retooled a little bit are our intelligence systems. Now we have to educate the line staff, the gang units and all that to look for terrorists, terrorist activities and terrorist recruiting and how they [operate]. It's not a whole lot different than how gangs do it, in my opinion. Q: What are some of the challenges associated with balancing inmate supervision vs. religious rights? Sturgeon: This is just a new twist to an old problem. Years ago, we afforded people their religious rights until their rights became gang meetings and [activities that jeopardized facility security]. We could demonstrate it and prove it. Many white supremacist groups tried to get in the prisons and operate under the guise of religion. For seasoned correctional administrators, we have been down this road before. It's just [that] we can't overreact. We have to continue to be vigilant to protect people rights but also to secure the institutions. I think the federal law on that (RLUIPA) is pretty clear and pretty fair, actually. Q: What precautions should agencies take to ensure that staff do not go overboard or inappropriately identify potential threats? Sturgeon: [I don't think they do typically] go overboard [or] overreact. I can't think of any occasion in this country where that has been an accusation of any particular group. [But there are ways to prevent that from happening]. The first one is to train the staff on how to react to different things, to be knowledgeable about the various intelligence gathering methods. Then supervise it and immediately managers and supervisors should move in for any corrective action. If they see something like that, they can't ignore it. In [this] day and age we've been so heavily litigated that I don't think we're going to see that. There may be a rare occurrence of someone saying something stupid. It's not that it can't happen. One time when I was [working as Chief of Operations for the Plymouth County (Mass.) jail] one of my guys came running up to me all excited about an inmate who professed to be of the Muslim faith. He found out that the inmate had eaten pork in the morning. He was a Roman Catholic [so] I said "Did you ever eat meat on Friday? Let's leave it up to individual gods to judge their people, not us." I've yet to find anyone who practices their religion perfectly. Those [are the] kinds of things you can't overreact to. Q: In what ways should corrections and law enforcement agencies collaborate to improve security to prevent against terrorist attacks? Sturgeon: We have to develop better mechanisms for sharing intelligence between fields. It's not agencies, it's field wide. It's the law enforcement field and the corrections field. They need to develop methods for the speedy sharing of information and intelligence because things unfold on the street very quickly and things unfold in prison very quickly. That cross-pollinization of information I think is critical and I think the other people the have to be involved in that cross- pollinization is just not law enforcement and corrections, but also parole. A lot of times a person can go into prison [identifying as] one thing and come out [as] something else. Parole officers [are] not really kept up to date about [certain inmates]. Q: What kind of progress has corrections made in this area? Sturgeon: I think we're better than we've ever been. I think we're sharing information. I think the issue is the timeliness of the sharing and the quality of the information. [Those issues] probably need to be looked at and enhanced. Q: How can agencies involve staff in the information sharing process? Sturgeon: It's up to departments to develop supervision and reporting mechanisms so that the officers on what I call "the bricks," who see what goes on everywhere [and] see the changes [in offenders'] moods and the environmental changes of a facility can have a mechanism that is responsive to [the staff that] they can report things to. (Responsive to them meaning that they get some feedback after they feed their intelligence or their observations up.) It's been my experience with some intelligence units [that], many times, when line officers give information [to their superiors], they never hear anything [back] about it. [If officers are given some feedback], at least [they know the information] has been received [and] it's being processed. The officers don't have to know everything. Years and years ago when I first started working [with] gangs, any time [I] got intelligence from the line officers, I'd always try to go back and at least thank them for it. That kind of stuff is critical.
Also, sometimes intelligence units spend too much time in the office and don't notice the actual goings on in the prison. Just like intelligence units in law enforcement, they get a lot of information from their own informants, but they [also] get a ton of information from their cohorts on the streets - street cops - who have informants and feed the information [to them]. Q: Do you think that the evolution of "prison Islam" is a national security threat? Does it exist across the country? Sturgeon: I don't think it's any more of a threat than any other [fanatic] group. I don't think it's national security threat. Any negative activities that could be construed to be subversive to include white supremacists, eco-terrorists are, in my opinion, as much a security threat as prison Islam. I think we get too myopic on just one group. The evolution of subversive groups and gangs certainly is across the country as far as just Islamic groups is not a national threat. Some [jails] have no Islamic [inmates]. Q: How much training should corrections officers receive in religious activities, be they Islam or other religions? Sturgeon: We need to step back a little bit on all of our training. I think we need to bring our staff up-to-date on a lot more intelligence gathering techniques. Again, training them on the systems that are in place and how to use them, I think that is critical, but I also think it's critical that we make terrorism a 360-degree initiative. There [is a] threat of people in the prisons - inmates - that could cause problems [in regard to] terrorist initiatives, but there's also a lot of people outside [that pose threats]. Prisons tend to be, in this country and other countries, a symbol of government. Training the staff for terrorism specifically needs to be enhanced because I think right now there are some gaps. [Training should focus on] what to look for outside [and] inside the prison, [how to] gather information [and] who to report it to. Also, a hostage situation with someone who doesn't care if they die takes on a [different] nuance. Another issue with training is, if you have inmates who are terrorists who have this deep seeded belief and they don't care about dying, we are going to have to develop different management techniques to deal with those inmates. I have no question in my mind that corrections will come up with it - we have developed management techniques for elderly inmates, gangs, [etc]. We'll develop this, [too], but, I think nationally, an initiative needs to be [developed]. We can always learn from what is going on with Guantanamo Bay about how to deal with a real hardcore terrorist inmate who really wants to die for their cause and doesn't care if they take someone else with them. Q: Are there any concerns DOCs should have about staff vulnerability -threats related to terrorism? Sturgeon: Staff is always vulnerable. We have to train our staff up. Sometimes poeple do things because they just don't know it's wrong or offensive, especially when you're dealing with other religions and cultures. It's an honest mistake. People sometimes do things out of ignorance, so they need to be trained up. [That training] is driven by [the] more inmates of that particular group [you have at a given facility]. If you have none, you can [educate staff] with a handout. If you have a whole group of them, then you need to go into some serious training initiatives. I think staff vulnerability also is internal and external. You also have to check staff vulnerability on the outside. In some cases, our pre-employment background investigations need to be done somewhat better. [Overall, though], I think that you've got to be real careful. I think [concentrating on one particular group] takes the focus off of all the other people we have in the prison. That can cause us problems. They may not be terrorists, but if the gangs know you're concentrating your efforts on a few groups, then the gangs are going to run wild. Prisons are a very difficult society to manage and you have to make sure that you are not excluding one group from your supervision to over-supervise other groups. But intelligence is key. Identify the players - that's an important part of gathering intelligence. |
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