Prevent’s “pre-crime” “risk-based” legal architecture delivered in the name of “keeping us safe” will bring an authoritarian future.
Since the introduction of Prevent, the number of “non-violent” terrorism (itself an oxymoronic term) offences have increased – and we can expect more of them.Prevent continues to operate within, and sustain, its own legal hinterland – both in terms of criminalisation and generating activity in a newly defined “pre-crime” space.
To justify such developments, a campaigning political landscape as opposed to a landscape of good governance is required and is indeed, being vigilantly fostered.
We hear legal experts saying that the problem with Prevent and other policies lies firstly – and crucially – in their legality under British due process, as well as their common sense. But these are opinions are being ignored.
Into this steps Islamophobia as a kind of “wedge” issue behind which the government has been able to gather popular support for Prevent and other similar policies.
This has brought a crisis of democracy.
Source: Prevent is a tool for a new secular authoritarian future – The People’s Review of Prevent
