Book Review 1

Book Review

The Spectacular Few: Prisoner Radicalization

and the Evolving Terrorist Threat
By Mark S. Hamm
New York University Press. 2013. 237 pages. $75.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

Reviewer: Francis Dodsworth, Open University

T
his book represents an important intervention by a prominent scholar in the
debate about the potential danger of radicalization in prisons. Positioning
himself between those who see American prisons as a hotbed of Islamic
radicalization that threatens a wave of homegrown terrorist attacks and those
who see radicalization as a marginal issue, Hamm identifies radicalization lead-
ing to terrorist activity as a rare but potentially lethal phenomenon. Hamm finds
that conversion to religion is a very common part of the prison experience and
usually beneficial for those whose lives lack order and structure and who are
generally unable to fill or manage their time. However, a small proportion of
inmates take up radical or extremist beliefs, and an even smaller propor-
tion go on to act on these. Hamm identifies a clear pattern here: using the life-
course criminology approach, he argues that radicalization appears to take place
when particular kinds of vulnerable individuals find themselves in specific condi-
tions of imprisonment: mass incarceration in maximum-security prisons, lead-
ing to overcrowded, racially segregated prison communities where gang culture
dominates life (5152, 113). This is made particularly clear in chapter 6 through
the contrast between Folsom and New Folsom prisons in California, which are
located next to each other but which embody two very different versions of
prison culture, fostering very different conversion outcomes. Within that con-
text, individuals tend to be radicalized by charismatic leaders in the absence of
strong networks of prison chaplains and rehabilitation schemes.
Hamms argument is intelligent, compassionate, and well argued. This book
is not anti-Islam, nor even obsessed with Islam: despite the cover image, white
supremacists receive a great deal of attention in these pages, alongside Muslim
converts. At the same time, Islam is generally presented as a positive force in
inmates lives, and Hamm laments the extent to which there can be a tendency
to confuse the important life-regulating function that Islam provides for inmates
with extremism (48). Indeed, he suggests that alongside a fundamental change
in the general pattern of incarceration and the removal of gang culture from
prisons, the development of Islam in prison itself provides one of the most likely
solutions to the problem of radicalization (see chapter 8).

The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Social Forces 94(2) e43
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved. For permissions, doi: 10.1093/sf/sot119
please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. Advance Access publication on 20 November 2013
2 Social Forces 94(2)

This, then, is an important argument that is well presented in a book that

is clearly aimed beyond an academic audience and deserves to be read beyond
the academy. However, although it is very readable, the order of presentation is
rather curious. The reader has to wait until chapter 3 before being introduced to
current debates about radicalization, and even later (11213) before the argu-
ment and methodology are clearly summarized. Of course, there is a balance
to be struck between a dry academic argument and the need to engage a wider
audience, but I think even the general reader would have welcomed some clearer
signposting.
The book also raised some more substantive questions in my mind. It begins
with a brief history of prison radicalization that takes in Churchill, Gandhi,
Mandela, and Hitler. This is a strange choice because the last three at least were
imprisoned because of their radical actions; that is to say, they could be seen
as ending up in prison because they were already radicalized rather than being
radicalized in prison, though a strong case can be made for the transformative
nature of their prison experiences in certain specific ways. This raises a second
question: what, then, is radicalization? Hamm employs the definition used by
the US Justice Department (43, 59), but it would be good to have some discus-
sion of what constitutes a good definition and why, given that this is the central
subject of the book. We might particularly ask what, if anything, makes religious
radicalization special, and what distinguishes prison radicalization from radical-
ization in general, beyond the obvious.
For example, although attention is drawn to the religious dimensions of white
supremacy movements, the religious element does not always appear to be signifi-
cant and is certainly not the core of radicalization in the way that Islam appears to
be in the case of Muslim converts. As far as other (nationalist or political) forms of
radicalization are concerned, reference is made to the role Islam now plays as the
resource of the repressed, replacing the traditional role played by Marxism (128,
139). I thought this comparison, while not being directly relevant to current US
prisons, could be pushed further (I am thinking of terrorism in Northern Ireland,
or the Red Brigades in Italy). We might also go on to wonder how distinctive the
prison environment itself is in terms of radicalization. Clearly the conditions of
incarceration are themselves distinctive, but if we look at the pattern of radicaliza-
tion in prison, its connections to gang cultures and charismatic individuals, would
this look any different outside prison, with the proviso that in some ways it may
be easier to distance oneself from both? For example, we are told that the ratio of
US Muslims to those charged with terrorism is 24,000: 1; in prison, it is 17,500: 1
(5960). Does this indicate that prison itself is the agent of radicalization, or simply
that the kind of people disposed toward violence who are likely to take that final
step from radicalization to terrorism are proportionately much more likely to be
found in maximum-security prisons full of violent offenders than they are in the
community at large? Overall, if we look at the case studies in chapter 5 or the list
of cases in the appendix, the number of cases involved is so few, and in many cases
we know so little about them, that assessment of the subject is quite difficult (see
especially 141). However, Hamm presents and argues his case well, and this book
deserves a wide audience.