Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been convicted of smuggling (a) Inspire magazine, (b) Dabiq magazine and (c) any other piece of proscribed extremist literature into prison in each year since 2010.

a) The five instances of Inspire magazine reported to have been found in a prisoner’s possession are set out below. On each occasion the magazine formed part of the prisoner’s defence paperwork and was removed.

2011 – Belmarsh

2012 – Manchester

2013 – Manchester

2013 – Woodhill

2015 - Frankland

b) There have been no reported cases of Dabiq magazine (subsequently Rumiyah) being found in prisoner possession. As to c) the Government proscribes terrorist organisations and possession of material associated with a proscribed group may constitute a criminal offence. However figures related to possession of literature associated to all proscribed terrorist organisations could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.

The possession or smuggling of material associated with a proscribed group may be an offence under section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006 or under section 22 of the Offender Management Act 2007. The published statistics for these offences are available at gov.uk, however conviction data is not broken down in a way which would identify the location of the offence as requested in this question.

We will not tolerate extremist material in prisons and where found it is removed and, if appropriate, referred to the police.