Only housing jihadis need is a prison cell

AT ANY time it would be grotesque that allegiance to the homicidal creed of Islamic State might be rewarded with a helping hand in the housing queue.

But when hundreds of thousands of hard-working, law-abiding young families struggle to afford a roof over their heads, such a proposal is actually outrageous.

No doubt those in MI5 and the Home Office examining this plan have good intentions. But they have spent too long in the intense, dark world of counterterrorism, and lost all sense of reality.

Material conditions may possibly influence some young people to turn towards the wilder forms of politics and religion, though much evidence suggests that the worst and most dangerous fanatics come from prosperous and well-educated backgrounds.

The shadowy zone from which so many violent killers come is much better explained by the lives of petty crime, drug abuse and listless drifting which so many of them have chosen to follow.

It is not that they are poor. It is that they are people who have grown used to transgression, enjoy it and have repeatedly got away with it.

Rather than dreaming up schemes to appease them, which will probably make such people laugh with derision, the police and security services should be paying much more attention to catching and prosecuting them, so deterring them from this squalid and dangerous way of life.

In many cases, the only housing currently suitable for them is in Her Majesty’s prisons. If more of them were helped to find accommodation under that particular roof, we might well see a reduction in the terror plague.