Prevent Watch Director Layla Aitlhadj draws out the real implications of the latest Home Office statistics in relation to the Prevent strategy – here are three important things the latest referrals numbers tell us.
Each year the Home Office publishes statistics on Prevent referrals in the name of transparency. However, each year Prevent Watch has warned that these statistics are not only misleading but reinforce the criminalisation of children and increase community tensions.
Shortly after the publication of the statistics for 2024/2025 the media highlighted the high numbers of referrals for right-wing “extremism”, but it is important to consider two aspects before they slip under the proverbial carpet: that infants – yes, babies! – are being referred to counter-terrorism; and that high numbers of right-wing referrals do not justify Prevent by any means.
1. Children from 0-10 years are being referred to counter-terrorism
Since 2015, the Home Office has presented the youngest age group of children referred to Prevent as “under 15s”. This broad age category conveniently blurred the age of very young children, including babies being dragged into Prevent.
Now, after years of advocacy by several civil society groups highlighting this lack of transparency, the Home Office changed their data reporting to include a more robust breakdown of young children being referred to Prevent – and the first age bracket starts from 0 to 10 years.
Nobody has questioned why the lower boundary was zero years of age. However, when taken together with the recent article by Hyphen investigative reporter Lucas Cumiskey which reveals that in the last 10 years there have been more than 200 Prevent referrals for babies aged 3 or under, it is clear that the use of zero in the Home Office statics is not just a mathematical convenience. Rather, it is a whispered admission that even toddlers and babies are being impacted by Prevent.
The lack of public alarm over this finding stems, in part, from how Prevent has nurtured a mindset in which even children are viewed as potential threats. When the Prevent duty operates in nurseries, and when Ofsted can downgrade early years settings for failing to spot supposed “signs of radicalisation”, the idea of precriminalising children becomes normalised.
The shift to younger age brackets is treated as nothing more than a technical detail, rather than a profound violation of children’s rights.
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Prevent Watch has documented numerous cases of babies caught up in Prevent’s dragnet. One such example occurred several years ago when an expectant mother called to tell us about a visit from a Prevent officer who was “concerned” about the father of her unborn child.
He was living abroad and had been smeared as an “extremist” by a foreign and well known oppressive government.
When this mother gave birth, the first people her baby met were not her family and friends but a Prevent officer and social worker who visited her hours after giving birth to express concerns about the baby being “radicalised”.
This is one of many cases where very young children have been “pre-criminalised” before they have uttered their first words, or been used as pawns to place pressure on parents to engage with Prevent.
In any other context, the revelation that babies are being placed into a counter-terrorism process would provoke national outrage. But in Prevent, it has simply been buried inside an age bracket.
2. More right-wing extremism referrals do not justify the Prevent strategy
Unlike the revelations about babies being placed in counter-terrorism processes, the spike in right-wing extremism referrals has attracted mainstream attention. Since 2021, individuals referred to Prevent for so-called “right-wing extremism” have outnumbered those flagged for “Islamist extremism”.
These figures are repeatedly used to silence Muslim concerns about Prevent and to suggest that the system is now “balanced” or “catching up” with right-wing extremist threats.
Yet our casework shows another side to the story. More people have contacted Prevent Watch this year for support with referrals for right-wing extremism than in any previous year, and the underlying issues are alarmingly familiar.
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Many of these referrals involve children, often autistic, flagged not because there is a concrete risk but because of misinterpreted statements, atypical behaviour, or frustrated views.
The same flawed logic that has discriminated against Muslim children and labelled them a threat, now defines other children in the same way.
We do not endorse an “equal opportunity Prevent” because in practice that means “equal opportunity harm”.
3. Home Office statistics obscure real impact of the Prevent duty on Muslims
Whilst the Home Office statistics may seem more transparent this year they still find a way to conceal as much as they reveal.
Even with the apparent rise in right-wing extremism referrals, when one considers the context in which Muslims make up only 6% of the UK population, Muslims are still at least 6 times more likely to be referred to Prevent than anyone else.
Furthermore, of the babies referred to Prevent in the last decade, two-thirds were flagged for so-called “Islamist” concerns.
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Those who review Prevent claim there is no evidence of discrimination against Muslims, but at best it is hidden beneath misleading data and at worst it is wilfully ignored. This deliberate obfuscation leaves children and communities unprotected and unfairly targeted.
We cannot fix a strategy that criminalises children before they can speak. We also cannot rely on data that has been engineered to obscure state overreach and divide people.
The only transparency Prevent needs is to disappear and become a ghost of the past.
