Main results
as at 31 March 2023, there were 232 persons in custody for terrorism-connected offences in Great Britain
of those in custody, the majority (64%) were categorised as holding Islamist-extremist views; a further 28% were categorised as holding extreme right-wing ideologies and 8% were categorised as holding other ideologies
a total of 41 prisoners held for terrorism-related or terrorism-connected offences were released from custody in Great Britain in the year ending 31 March 2023 for which figures are available (year ending 31 December 2022)
Statistics presented in this section give information on the number of persons in custody for terrorism-connected offences in Great Britain. This includes both those that had been convicted and those being held on remand (that is, held in custody until a later date when a trial or sentencing hearing will take place). This section includes breakdowns of their ethnicity, nationality, ideology and religion. Prior to June 2018, the Home Office published figures on both terrorist prisoners and domestic extremist/separatist prisoners. However, following feedback from data providers at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), it was decided that prisoners categorised as ‘domestic extremist/separatist’ prisoners would be counted within the ‘TACT/TACT-related’ cohort, where the threshold for this is met, such as for offences which the court has determined have a terrorist connection. This was to remove the previous subjectivity around the categorisation of domestic extremist prisoners. From September 2020 onwards, the Ministry of Justice and Home Office have formally adopted the definition ‘Terrorism-Connected Offender’. This definition replaced the previously used definition ‘Terrorism-Related Offender’ which will no longer be used for the purposes of publishing official statistics for terrorist prisoners. The change in definition between the publication of statistics as at 30 June 2020 and 30 September 2020 caused roughly 10% of prisoners to be removed from the classification at that point. For this reason, figures for September 2020 onwards are not directly comparable with previous years or quarters. This definition change is in alignment with Part 2 of Schedule 19ZA of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (as inserted by the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020), which concerns those offenders who have not committed terrorist offences (that is, those listed in Part 1 of the Schedule) but who have committed other specified offences which the court has determined have a ‘terrorist connection’. That determination may only be made by the sentencing court in accordance with Part 3 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 and only after consideration of the requirements/matters specified in that Act. Data were provided to the Home Office by HMPPS and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), giving information about the prison population for the 10 years from 31 March 2014 to 31 March 2023, and also at the end of the 9 quarters to 31 March 2023. Data on the number of prisoners released cover the 9 quarters to 31 December 2022. Prisoner release figures up to 31 March 2023 are not yet available as these will form a subset of the prison releases statistics which will be published by the Ministry of Justice in their offender management statistics quarterly release in July 2023.
4.1 Persons in custody As at 31 March 2023, there were 232 persons in custody for terrorism-connected offences in Great Britain. Of those in custody, 149 (64%) were categorised as holding Islamist-extremist views, 10 fewer compared to the year ending 31 March 2022. A further 65 (28%) were categorised as holding extreme right-wing ideologies, up from 24% and a 4 percentage point increase compared to the year ending 31 March 2022. The remaining 18 prisoners (8%) were categorised as holding beliefs related to other ideologies, 1 more compared to the year ending 31 March 2022. Figure 4.1: Number of persons in custody for terrorism-related offences, by ideology, year ending March 2014 to year ending March 2023, Great Britain1,2 Source: CPS CTD (see data tables A P.01) Notes:
The ‘Other’ category includes any prisoners not classified as holding a specific ideology.
Following changes agreed with the prison service, for figures at 31 March 2020 onwards, we have adopted the definition ‘Terrorism-connected offender’ to replace the previously used definition ‘Terrorism-related offender’ for this time-series.
4.2 Persons released from custody A total of 41 terrorist prisoners were released from custody in Great Britain in the year ending 31 March 2023 for which figures were available (year ending 31 December 2022)[footnote 7]. This figure includes 14 terrorism-connected offenders released between January 2022 and June 2022 and 27 terrorism-connected offenders between July 2022 and December 2022. October 2022 to December 2022 saw the highest number of terrorism-connected offenders released (21) in a single quarter in the last 2 years. Of the 41 terrorist prisoners released from custody, 38 (93%) were persons released from custody after serving sentences, many of whom will be subject to meeting certain licence conditions. Of the 41 released from custody, 13 had received sentences of less than 4 years, and 25 had sentences of 4 years or more. No one was released following an indeterminate sentence for public protection. Three people had been convicted but not yet been sentenced.