Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Britain’s prisons aren’t working

HMP Manchester (photo: Getty)

Last April police officers found the bodies of two women, Mihrican Mustafa and Henriett Szucs, stored in Zahid Younis’s freezer. Before their murder Younis had served two jail sentences. The first came in 2005 after he married a 14-year-old in a Walthamstow mosque, got his child bride pregnant, and assaulted her. For this he was given 30 months. In 2008 he was jailed again for breaking the arm of a 17-year-old girl he was dating. For this he received nearly five years. Think carefully. Was there anything in his previous actions that suggested Younis might not become a safe and upstanding member of society?

How about Usman Khan? Khan was jailed in 2012 for a terror plot involving a string of bombs. His indefinite sentence ‘for public protection’, was altered by appeal judges, and he was released in December 2018. Then he murdered two people in last year’s London Bridge attack.

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