Intelligence agency needs to keep a closer watch on extremism in prisons, report says

Canada's spies could be doing a better job of investigating extremism in the prison system, says an internal report.

The document, obtained through an access to information request, emerged from a behind-the-scenes review of how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the RCMP share information.

"One of the concerns we have is the lack of coverage over persons convicted of terrorism offences once they are in jail," says the report. It was written by two national security lawyers tasked by the RCMP and CSIS with making recommendations to deal with information-sharing bottlenecks in the national security intelligence sphere.

"It is accepted that there is a radicalisation problem within our correctional institutions, not only Islamic extremism but also extreme right-wing white nationalism," the report says. "The vast majority of inmates will be released to the community. The challenge is to monitor these released offenders to evaluate the threat posed, if any."

The authors write that while it's impossible for CSIS to investigate every potential threat, "it can and should investigate threats arising from those in custody."

"Where a person has been convicted of a terrorism offence, it is likely that they will continue to adhere to an extremist ideology and influence others who will pose threats to national security upon release," said the report.

"Without visibility over the correctional environment, it is conceivable that we will not know of persons who pose a threat upon release."

The 253-page "top secret" report suggests changes to permit provincial and federal correctional authorities to do a better job of sharing information with both CSIS and the RCMP.

"This will allow these agencies to develop appropriate threat management measures to manage those offenders who pose threats and have been recently released from jail," reads the document.

But William Shultz, a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, said his research shows that prison culture and its hierarchies might actually be keeping extremism in check.

Schulz said a bedrock level of patriotism in prison populations makes associating with known terrorists quite risky.

"There's almost a pride in Canadian national identity and terrorism is perceived as a bad action against that," he said.

"There's often a wide assumption that people in prison are ... sort of blank slates that you can just impress whatever extremist beliefs you'd like onto, [and] that's not at all the case. There are very distinctive sub-cultural factors at play."

Between 2016 and 2017, Shultz and his co-authors gained unprecedented access to several Canadian prisons as part of their study. They interviewed almost 600 inmates and about 130 corrections officers about prison life, asking them whether they had observed radicalized messaging or recruitment in the prisons.