After two recent attacks by released terrorists, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is moving to strengthen detention policies for convicted terrorists.
The reforms would end the automatic release of convicted terrorists at the halfway point of their custodial sentences. Convicted terrorists would instead have to be approved for early release by a parole board. The hope is that this reform will reduce the risk of reoffending and better protect the public.
Still, there’s a major political effort to get this legislation passed quickly.
That effort is a response to rising public fears over two recent terrorist stabbing rampages in London. The first was a November 2019 attack by a recently paroled terrorist convict, which killed two innocent people. The second was a February 2020 attack by a recently released terrorist. The terrorists were shot dead by police in both cases.
But the government’s primary concern is that approximately 50 convicted terrorists are approaching the halfway points of their sentences. Unless new legislation is passed, they will be released automatically. It would be one thing if they could be monitored effectively on release, but that’s just not humanly possible.
Currently conducting about 750 active and credible counterterrorism investigations, the police and the domestic security service, MI5, lack the surveillance capacity to monitor all higher-threat terrorists at all times. This challenge is further amplified by the fact that Salafi-jihadi recruiters and material are increasingly attuned to operational security. Which is to say, terrorists now know how to mitigate their vulnerability to investigative detection, and, while MI5 has great legal latitude to conduct technical and signals surveillance, effective human surveillance requires at least 15 officers over a 24-hour period.
So, what happens next?
Well, Johnson’s large parliamentary majority means the law will change, but not everyone is happy. Some lawyers suggest that these reforms are incompatible with existing human rights law. Others point to the relatively low reoffending rate for convicted terrorists as evidence that the legislation is unnecessary. Both complaints are misplaced.
On the first point, the British government is not, as it once did in Northern Ireland, trying to keep people interned indefinitely. It is simply trying to protect the public by establishing safeguards against those serving active sentences. Moreover, a low rate of reoffending is no grounds for calm when the reoffending in question leans heavily toward threats against innocent lives.
In short, this legislation is both necessary and overdue.
