Shaping young minds

What per cent of the England and Wales population are Muslim? What per cent of prisoners in England and Wales are Muslim? That is the odd question I overhead a local imam ask at an evening class for 9 year olds. As expected, none of the kids knew and the imam gave them the answer – 3 and 12 per cent respectively. The point he was trying to drive home to the young minds was that the Muslim prison population is disproportionately high compared with the overall number of Muslims in the country. He was doing his bit for encouraging good behaviour and citizenship. He had, no doubt, done his homework. According to Ministry of Justice data, as of June 2008 (the most recent detailed data I could find) there were 83,194 prisoners in England and Wales. Of these, 9795 were Muslim. This, as the imam said, is around 12% of the prison population.