NY Times Agrees with Author on Terrorism's Prison Connection

In two back to back reports the New York Times has outlined the progression from convict to jihadist in the case of the most recent terrorist attacks in France.
In the first article by Andrew Higgins, the reporter outlined the downward spiral of the life Amedy Coulibaly, the self admitted follower of ISIS who was killed by French Tactical Units after he killed a policewomen, and four Jewish customers in Paris’s Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket.


Coulibaly was known to authorities as a petty criminal who became a radicalized follower of Smaïn Ait Ali Belkacem, an incarcerated terrorist serving a life sentence for a 1995 attack on a rail station at the Musée d’Orsay.
The second article by Jim Yardley picked up on the life of Chérif Kouachi, a known associate of Amedy Coulibaly, who along with his brother Said attacked the offices of Charlie Hedbo and killed twelve individuals while purporting to be acting as members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula(AQAP).
According to the reporter prison was the environment that :

"There, their radicalism hardened as some members of the group came together with other prominent jihadists who were connected to more extensive and dangerous militant networks."

A new concept?  Not really.   Counterterrorism experts knew of this phenomena years ago.
It had been outlined in intelligence reports by several agencies including, the CIA, the FBI, and France's domestic intelligence agencyRenseignements Généraux (RG).
I first wrote about this phenomena five years ago in an article entitled, "The Roots of Radical Islam in Prison"
The dynamics of specific cases  were further outlined in my book, "The Fertile Soil of Jihad"

This is an issue that will not soon go away.  Thankfully the main stream media is recognizing the problem of placing convicted terrorists in the same prisons a common criminals.