Our submission to the HASC report on new forms of extremism answered questions posed by the HASC, drawing attention to inherent problems with gauging ‘extremism’ due to the operation of Prevent.
Our submission described several key problems with Prevent and thus with assessing ‘extremism’ in the UK. A summary of our submission follows.
Our full submission is available here.
Identifying Extremism Risk
Ticking any of the boxes on a National Prevent Referral Form can justify a Prevent referral with safeguarding leads advised: ‘better to be safe than sorry’.
The Home Office Select Committee asks about trends relating to the growth of different types of extremism and radicalisation, including that of ‘mixed, unstable and unclear ideologies’ – but this category is potentially an artifact of how the boxes on the form are ticked.
It is a subjective judgement made by the assessing individual and the upward trend in these referrals reflects public anxieties about new kinds of risk.
We know this because judgements exercised in the Prevent referral process toward a Channel adoption provides a very different indication of the risk.
How Does Someone get Reported as an Extremism Risk?
Prevent is skewed toward young people. Since 2015, all children and young people are monitored for Prevent concerns every day of their school career.
For the year ending 31 March 2024, 40% of referrals came from the Education sector. A further 28% came from the Police. Just over 2% came from the community and just over 3% from the Prison and Probation service.
No information is provided about referrals from Health, and it is unclear how the balance of referrals – around 27% – is made up.
The Select Committee asks: ‘What factors will determine whether or not new Youth Diversion Orders would be effective in preventing young people from becoming radicalised?’
We believe an informal practice of diversion orders may be in place; children under the age of 15 who have come to the attention of the police may, in some cases, be being diverted onto Channel.
The Select Committee could check this by asking the Home Office for data on Channel adoptions by sector and by age, which is readily available.
Racial and Religious Discrimination in Prevent
In the year ending 31 March 2024, 45% of cases adopted by Channel were for far-right extremism, while 23% were for Islamist extremism, where 19% of all referrals were for far-right extremism and 13% for Islamist concerns.
Thus, the definition of ‘extremism’ is drawn broadly for ‘Islamist’ concerns and narrowly for the far-right.
It is our view that this indicates that the Independent Review of Prevent endorsed a discriminatory practice in Recommendation 20 of his report.
The discrimination consists in the disparity between referrals and adoption onto Channel since those who are judged not to be suitable for Channel cannot be regarded as being on the trajectory to violence. In fact, they have been confirmed not to exhibit extremism and not to be at risk of radicalisation.
Disability, Discrimination and Prevent
Many civil rights bodies, including Rights and Security International, have expressed concern about the disproportionate number of individuals with Autism caught up in Prevent.
Individuals with Autism are also over-represented in Channel panels.
Prevent and its Harms
Most of those referred – the largest proportion being children and young people – are interviewed by counter-terrorism police at an early stage of the process.
Because no offence has been committed these interviews do not come under PACE 1984 guidelines and there is evidence that many of these interviews take place without a responsible adult present.
For many children and young people this will be traumatic, even where the outcome is that no further action is taken.
Among the documented consequences are withdrawal, anxiety, and the exacerbation of mental health issues (especially where these have been part of the initial referral) as well as a decline in academic performance and sociability.
This is compounded by the fact that the information about the referral can be stored on as many as 10 police and official databases. This applies to all information gathered during the Prevent process.
This fear extends to databases beyond those held by the police or Home Office – the most common is CPOMS, a complete safeguarding record that follows a pupil from school to school, and on to sixth form.
There is no formal mechanism whereby any school making a referral will be informed of the outcome, so a record about possible risk of radicalisation is available and linked to the child, even when there was no cause for concern.
This creates a false perception, framing the child or young person as an ‘extremist’ or ‘at risk’ of being one, and effectively creating a larger apparent ‘trend’ that sustains an inaccurate perception of risk, in turn sustaining Prevent.
Misinterpreted ‘Failures’ of Prevent
At most 11 cases of a supposed failure of Prevent have been identified out of a total of 58 000 people referred since 2015.
In any other area of the criminal justice system a ratio of 11 to 58 000 would be considered an extraordinarily low ‘recidivism’ rate.
While each individual case is deeply regrettable, there is no basis for considering an extension of Prevent to be warranted.
The Implications of Youth Diversion Orders for Youth ‘Extremism’
Home Office statistics indicate that around 77% of the 6922 Prevent referrals made in the year 2023/24 were signposted to support services already existing in health and education prior to discussion at a Channel panel.
Of the 893 cases discussed at a Channel panel 381 of them (43%) were not adopted onto Channel of which 272 (71%) were also signposted to these existing support services.
This indicates that there are already policies in place – in which care professionals are well versed – to deal with problematic behaviour by children and young people, outside the counter-terrorism apparatus (including its data collection and retention measures).
In these cases, youth diversion orders would not be appropriate because the behaviour has been deemed not to involve the risk of an offence.
We propose that Prevent be more firmly allied with evident security risks.
To remain true to its actual core application and theoretical basis, Prevent, and its associated interventions, should be directed at offenders as part of rehabilitation and probation processes only.
This would allow Prevent, or its successor scheme, to be focused on those who constitute the greatest risk to the public who have demonstrated intent, rather than simply expressed ideas judged to be extreme, but lawful.
Prevent can be removed from education. Schools and further education classrooms, halls and theatres should be safe spaces for children and young people, where discussions and ideas may be traded, evidenced, argued and counter-argued, and thus naturally moderated in a context of trust.
Prevent and counter-terrorism should be removed from the health sector, where there is an added duty of care on professionals to ensure that troubling beliefs, statements and even acts when deemed health-related, are moderated free of security imperatives.
Supporting Young People
Funding for mental health and youth services should be restored and directed towards areas where there are real needs and real benefits for children and young people to meet complex needs.
Youth work can be de-securitised away from Prevent and CT.
Community cohesion is important and we support the new government’s intention to promote inclusive public policy. However, we believe that the framing of community cohesion in terms of public security and Prevent is counterproductive.
This contributes to the stigmatisation of some communities in terms of a perceived distance from ‘British values’. There is no need to designate those values as peculiarly ‘British’ or imply that some families embody a cultural deficit. There is no evidence for this.
The ‘Duty to Promote British Values’ (in England) should be replaced with a ‘Duty to Promote Citizenship’. We also support the idea of ‘Youth Hubs’, which will add substance to the proposed reduction in the voting age and enhance healthy participation in society.
Read our full submission here.
Related…
The HASC makes several recommendations relevant to the Prevent duty
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