Disturbing, ‘horrifying’ findings emerge from report on grooming gangs in the UK
Rep. Brandon Gill, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, has criticized what he describes as an alleged cover-up surrounding grooming gang crimes in the United Kingdom, saying the abuse was not a series of isolated cases. Gill argued that the scandals have raised difficult questions about immigration, community cohesion and cultural values, particularly regarding the protection and dignity of women and girls.
Fresh scrutiny is also falling on Britain’s prison system after U.K. media reports this week alleged that radical Muslim inmates have pressured other prisoners, many of them white British men, to convert to Islam behind bars.
Concerns about the influence of Muslim prison gangs are not new. Sky News reported in 2013 that some British inmates were being bullied into converting while serving sentences, citing the Prison Officers Association’s warning that the issue reflected the growing power of Muslim gangs inside prisons.
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary for the opposition Conservative Party, renewed pressure on the Labour government this week to confront the issue of coerced religious conversions. Writing Tuesday on X, Timothy claimed that “Islamist gangs control many of our prisons” and said conversion to Islam had become, for some inmates, “the only way to stay safe.” He also cited data he said showed that one in five Muslim prisoners is white — a rate he described as four times higher than among the general population — adding, “This cannot continue.”
A prison guard walks past a sign for the prison mosque inside HMP Wandsworth in southwest London. Built in 1851, Wandsworth is among the largest prisons in Western Europe, with capacity for 1,456 inmates. (Andrew Aitchison/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images))
Timothy later told the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph that experts have repeatedly warned about forced conversions in prisons, which he said are being driven by Islamic gangs. “We need to be honest that something is not right here,” he said, calling on Labour to urgently investigate and “stamp out forced conversions in prison.”
The U.K. Ministry of Justice pushed back against the broader characterization, saying in a press release that “most prisons show no evidence of gang-based extremism.” The ministry said it has barred terrorist prisoners from taking leadership roles in corporate worship, including leading the call to prayer, and has tightened controls on prison materials that could be used to promote harmful ideologies.
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, said the reported trend is damaging confidence in the U.K. prison system and could carry national security implications. “It is an absolutely outrageous state of affairs in the British prison system,” Gardiner, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, told News Outlet. He added that the government appears to have lost control of some prisons, describing them as potential “jihadist training camps.”
He added that “urgent actions needs to be taken” in response to “the level of forced Islamization in British jails.”
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Prisoners return from their jobs to their wings for lunch at Wandsworth prison. HMP Wandsworth in South West London was built in 1851 and is one of the largest prisons in Western Europe. It has a capacity of 1456 prisoners. (Andrew Aitchison/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)
The number of incarcerated Muslims has its origins in a defective British immigration policy, said Gardiner. According to The Telegraph, “the number of Muslim prisoners in jails in England and Wales has also increased and accounts for nearly one in five (18%) of the prison population, despite making up 6.5% of the general population.”
Gardiner told News Outlet that “It is very clear that large-scale Islamic migration into the United Kingdom is having a direct impact on crime and public safety in the United Kingdom. And the growing Islamization of Britain carries with it immense risks for British national security and crime. The inflow of Islamic migrants is a real threat to Britain’s future.”
Jonathan Hall, the British government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, wrote in his 2022 report titled “Terrorism in Prisons” that he secured evidence that Islamist terrorists are behaving and acting as “self-styled emirs.”
A Muslim prisoner prays in his cell at Wandsworth prison. HMP Wandsworth in South West London was built in 1851 and is one of the largest prisons in Western Europe. It has a capacity of 1456 prisoners. (Andrew Aitchison/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)
He added that the terrorists are “exerting a controlling and radicalising influence on the wider Muslim prison population (including through enforcers, whilst keeping their hands clean); recruitment (in particular of vulnerable or lonely prisoners, using guidance, sharing of food or material gifts), and conversion backed by implicit or actual violence; soliciting or accepting menial tasks (such as cell-cleaning) from lower status prisoners.”
A spokesperson from the ministry told News Outlet that, “We do not tolerate intimidation, gang activity or faith-based coercion of any kind in our prisons.” The spokesperson added, “Prisons and staff act swiftly to clamp down on all threatening behavior from any groups or individuals.”
According to the Justice spokesperson, “Forced religious conversions are not tolerated across the prison estate. In response to the report from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall, HMPPS [His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service] carried out a review into the influence of faith-based gangs. Following the review, HMPPS has improved the ability to identify nascent extremist gang activity and disrupt it before it takes hold via advanced training and data collection.”
A British Union flag flies from a souvenir stall near the Houses of Parliament in London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
An independent review by Colin Bloom, a British government advisor, looking at how the government engages with faith, in part stated, that “Failure to identify as a Muslim meant that at best the new prisoner would be denied ‘protection’ from the dominant Muslim gang on that wing, or at worst the new prisoner would be subjected to violence and intimidation from that same gang. “
According to a News Outlet review of the 2023 Bloom report, the 159-page study noted that “The 2019 Ministry of Justice report on separating extremist prisoners noted the growing problem of religious extremism across the prison estate, including the “aggressive encouragement of conversions to Islam.”
Bloom had previously told GB News that there are some very good (Muslim) chaplains and excellent practices in prison, but “there is also, I think fair to say, that a number of prisons there are very large and aggressive Islamist gangs… where evidence was given to me and my review where Koran’s were put on the bed of incoming inmates with the very clear indication convert or get hurt, and it was a way of coercing people to say, you know if you want to be protected in prison then you have to convert and become part of our gang.”
A general view of HMP Wandsworth prison on July 12, 2024, in London, England. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Bloom noted that “prisons are actually a much more religious place than the rest of society. More people have a faith if they’re in prison than not. But even by the standards of the most amazing, you know revivals religious conversions, there is something going on in prisons because we are seeing the most incredible number of people converting, particularly to Islam, in a way that is defies logic. And I think one of the things that we need to ensure that prison chaplains and prison management have is that inquiring mind to say just what the heck is going on here. This doesn’t seem right.”
