The number of younger people referred to Prevent has doubled since last summer, the Home Secretary has revealed.
Yvette Cooper told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that she was “really worried” about “increasing extremism among young people”, with rising numbers being reported to Prevent or arrested for terrorism offences.
But she also warned that not enough cases of Islamic extremism were being referred to the programme, saying she was “concerned about the threshold ending up being too high”.
Asked about the findings of that review on Tuesday, Ms Cooper said: “This is one of the issues that I am really worried about, and we are seeing increasing extremism among young people.”
Adding that the counter-terror caseload involving young people had trebled in the last three years, she said: “What we’ve also seen, I think, is a doubling of the number of young people being referred to Prevent since last summer as well.
“So this does raise some very significant challenges for us.”
Read more on Yahoo News UK.
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