Las formas organizativas de los grupos terroristas en prisión.De las organizaciones terroristas clásicas al yihadismo

Abstract

Politically motivated crime in its various forms has traditionally been a problem for prison administration. The conception of these individuals as criminals who acted for altruistic causes justified during much of the nineteenth century a more benign regime. The end of the nineteenth century brought the emergence of a new type of political violence inspired by the principles of propaganda by the deed. The emergence of terrorism, initially linked to social problems and class struggle, meant a change in the way in which this new form of violent crime was treated. This phenomenon directly attacked the foundations of the liberal state that had been consolidated throughout the nineteenth century. Among the institutions of this liberal state that were refuted by the new political currents such as anarchism and communism, the one that caused the greatest rejection was prison. The prison became one of the main instruments of control of the State. At the same time, it became an ideological battlefield that served as a school of political thought and a symbol of numerous social and political struggles. This dynamic took hold during the twentieth century with successive waves of terrorism. If during the first third of the century, the protagonist was anarchism, the sixties, seventies and eighties brought to prisons the conflict between States and numerous nationalist and extreme left terrorist groups. States were forced to adopt numerous measures in relation to prisons. These measures included the construction of high-security prisons and the adoption of legislative measures in the penitentiary area. Prison policies became part of anti-terrorism policy. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century marked the rise of jihadist terrorism. The generalization of actuarialism and managerialism in penal and penitentiary policy influenced in turn the way in which the management of prisoners linked to jihadist terrorism has been approached. Spain has followed the same process in its prison response to the phenomenon of terrorism. If a policy of collective containment was used with the prisoners of ETA and GRAPO, with the jihadist prisoners, a technical approach has been chosen that considers possible the adoption of deradicalization measures. This technical approach, which also involves a "depoliticization" of the management of this new group is also based on risk assessment and anticipation techniques. At the same time, however, it has meant a whole new category of suspicious inmates, susceptible to radicalization.