Prison may no longer be the safest place to send Australia’s terrorists. Recent reports indicate that Muslim radicals are using penitentiaries to garner new converts. Through intimidation, violence and coercion, the Islamic State has managed to gain a foothold in prisons across the nation, sparking fears that newly converted extremists will be released into the community with a dangerous new mind-set and agenda.

A Growing Army

According to the Australian, 8 to 9 percent of prisoners in Victoria and New South Wales currently identify as Muslim, compared to the 2 to 3 percent of the Australian public that identifies as Muslim. The newspaper speculated that any New South Wales prison may see as many as four conversions per month. While perhaps small individually, there are at least 35 correctional centers throughout New South Wales—varying in size. If Islamic converts come out of only half of those, it still equates to a substantial number. And this is just one state.

Public Service Association Corrections Branch Chairman Steve McMahon told the Daily Telegraph that the forced conversions to Islam were “very concerning” and “most likely extremist related.” He continued, “The Muslims in jail are not upstanding citizens …. These people are clearly doing it for some reasons other than their devotion to the faith, and it is concerning in light of how dangerous some of these individuals have become.”

In other words, imprisoned radicals are using prison conversions to expand terror-related activity in the nation.

Gang and terror-related crime needs foot soldiers, and the Muslim recruiters are tapping into a, quite literally, captive audience.

Convert or Be Bashed

The old Islamic adage of “conversion or the sword” cannot be so strictly adhered to in a federal prison—a fist or shank is often the replacement of choice. At Kariong Jail, a number of inmates were beaten this year after refusing to convert. According to the Daily Mail, the prison has recently been inundated with requests for extra prayer mats and copies of the Koran. Similar conversions are happening at Lithgow jail and others.

There is nowhere to run in a prison. With an ever increasing Muslim population, pressure grows on other inmates to subscribe to the doctrines being foisted on them by radicals.

McMahon stated, “We’ve been witnessing a level of recruitment for many years now, primarily among indigenous inmates, but now we’re seeing younger inmates being targeted and converted, and we’re seeing some fairly concerning behavior from some of those inmates.”

The Daily Telegraph published an article stating that authorities had uncovered plots to behead those who refused conversion, including guards and staff. One entire yard apparently had been converted to Islam, except for six Christians. The Muslim inmates planned to behead one Christian, film it on a phone, and post it on the Internet as propaganda for the Islamic State.

There have already been murders. The stabbing of an Adnan Darwiche gang member in September last year was believed to be religiously motivated. Men have been stabbed for shaving off their beards before parole hearings, a sign that they had reneged on their religious commitments.

The religious violence is a harbinger of the new war in Australia’s penal system.

In a situation where being part of a gang is often necessary for survival, conversion by the fist is an effective recruiting technique. The pool from which the recruiters fish also carries plenty of young men looking for protection, purpose and justification for their actions.

Taking Over

Most prisoners are still allowed to converse in Arabic, making it increasingly dangerous for those who don’t understand the language. Some prisons now have yards exclusively for Muslims in order to protect non-Muslim inmates.

Some of the prison gangs at Goulburn Correctional Center, Australia’s highest-security prison, include Brothers 4 Life and Will to Kill. While the gangs do not originate with radical Islam, they have slowly morphed toward Islamic State radicalization. Prison guards at Goulburn have found flags, tattoos and other indicators of the rising Islamic State influence.

McMahon voiced his concerns to the Daily Telegraph: “I don’t believe enough is being done to catalog and track who is being converted, and certainly not enough is being done to equip officers with the skills they need to manage what I see as a major emerging problem in New South Wales.”

A glimpse into where this crisis is leading can be seen in the example of Bourhan Hraichie. At just 18 years old, Hraichie was a self-professed radical. He was caught numerous times sending graphic beheading photos to other inmates at Goulburn, as well as making Islamic State flags and carving the Islamic State symbol on a prison wall.

Through a terrible prison staff blunder, Hraichie was placed in a cell with a former Australian soldier suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Within hours, Hraichie choked and then whipped the soldier repeatedly. Then the 18-year-old poured boiling water over his face and carved “E4E” (representing “an eye for an eye”) into both the front and back of the former soldier’s head.

Every cell has an alarm in it, but the attack went on for 20 minutes. Nobody warned the guards because everybody was threatened with the same treatment if they intervened.

This is the environment in which radical growth is being fostered. And the longer it goes unaddressed, the worse it will become.

Prisoners are mingling with convicted terrorists in the general population—men like Mohammed Elomar and Abdul Hasan, both convicted of plotting terror attacks in Sydney back in 2004 and 2005. There are radical sheikhs like Wassim Fayad, who whipped a man with electrical cords for breaking sharia law. Others previously convicted and isolated are now being moved into the general populace alongside the non-radical criminals.

Australia has been conducting raids and police stings across the nation in an attempt to crack down on people leaving the country to join the Islamic State. But as it turns out, those caught and convicted have plenty of opportunities to teach, train and convert within the prison system.

The radical Islamic element of Australian society has been near-dormant for years, but the rise of the Islamic State has fostered insurrection.

It has started now in the penitentiaries. And as prisoners convert and return to society, or get transferred to other prisons, radical Islam is going to go with them.