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Rich, readable blogs from our experts who work among the community, in academia and research, providing invaluable insight on new developments in Prevent and their real impact on people.

Picture of a teenage boy in article on what a prevent referral does to a child CategoriesLatest Expert Views Community Expert View Education Expert View Health Expert View Our Expert Views

What a Prevent referral actually does to a child

From the trauma of being questioned alone with no adults present to worsening mental health, a Prevent referral can be devastating to a child even when it is deemed unwarranted, writes Zara W. Tahir.  Just over half (53% according to the latest statistics) of all Prevent referrals target children, but what does it mean to a child to be referred to Prevent? Most notably, it means that under the Prevent duty, “children have been interrogated by counter-terrorism officers without the protections that are afforded to those who are suspected of a crime”.[1] This has been done without a parent’s knowledge or consent, as in the case with this 12-year-old girl, whose parents got a call from the school saying a police officer had interrogated their child at school, leaving them panicked and confused. “Imagine the amount of fear, stress and frustration you go through when as a parent you receive […]

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The Elephant and the Rider: Why the Prevent strategy’s shifting treatment of ideology proves it is ineffective and harmful

The Prevent strategy’s theory that once held that ideology drives terrorism, now no longer describes the people it targets. This means Prevent has not evolved – rather, it has undone itself, writes Zara W. Tahir. Throughout history, the image of ‘the rider and the horse’ has been used as an aphorism for the relationship between emotions (the horse) and the intellect (the rider). Jonathan Haidt reconceptualizes this image as ‘the rider and the elephant’. Haidt explains in his book, ‘The Righteous Mind’, that when presented with a choice to make, we would like to think that we tally the pros and cons and then make our decision. But in reality, we have an emotional or intuitive response to the choice, and we create a narrative as a rational post-hoc justification for the decision we have already intuitively accepted. Thus, instead of the rational rider controlling the unruly intuitive horses, the […]

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No Prevent? Lessons from Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has experienced decades of politically motivated violence, paramilitarism, and community polarisation on a scale unmatched elsewhere in the UK. This piece by Zara W. Tahir examines why Prevent has never been applied in Northern Ireland, what has been done instead, and what that tells us about whether Prevent is truly fit for purpose anywhere. In 2016, Andy Burnham, at the time the Shadow Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, compared the Prevent Duty to internment in Northern Ireland calling it “a policy felt to be highly discriminatory against one section of the community”.[1] Now, as Prime Minister, he has an opportunity — and arguably an obligation — to ask the question Northern Ireland has already answered by practice: is Prevent a counter-terrorism tool, or is it a mechanism for surveilling communities the state has already decided to distrust? A decade on, the Prevent strategy remains absent in its […]

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To the teacher who has been told to make a Prevent referral: you have more room than you think

When it comes to making a Prevent referral, teachers can lean on several laws to push back against what can often feel like a compulsory measure, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. In June, Prevent Watch published an Educators’ Resource with Amnesty International UK and Liberty called Safeguarding not Securitisation[1] because teachers kept asking us the same questions and their schools’ guidance did not answer them. This article draws on it to set out what the Prevent duty does and does not ask of you, why your training points you towards over-referral, and what a referral does to the child on the other end of it. The duty is on the school, not on you The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places the Prevent duty on institutions. It is the school or the college, as a body, that must have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into […]

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Back to School: What has changed when it comes to Prevent in schools

The rules around your child changed this year. Here are three things linked to Prevent in schools that you need to know, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. If your child started school or a new year this September, you would have been given the usual things: a uniform list, a safeguarding leaflet, perhaps a form asking you to agree to the school’s online policy. What you will not have been told is that over the past twelve months the rules that decide when a school treats a child as a possible danger have changed. Each of those changes widens the reach of Prevent in schools or the life of the record it creates, and not one of them gives you any new right to be told when it happens to your child. At Prevent Watch we support people affected by Prevent, part of the government’s counter-terrorism programme. Most of the children […]

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UN racial discrimination committee grades UK progress on Prevent ‘unsatisfactory’

Two years ago, on 23 August 2024, the UN’s racial discrimination committee urged the UK to suspend the Prevent duty. Civil society organisations and independent experts had been saying for a decade that Prevent was discriminatory and not fit for purpose. But this time the verdict came from the body the UK agreed to answer to when it signed the UN’s racial discrimination treaty in 1966. Prevent Watch was one of eight organisations that had submitted evidence to the Committee ahead of its conclusions. One of our clients, a mother whose child had been referred by their school, flew to Geneva to tell the Committee in person what harm that referral had done to her family. The UK government had a year to respond. When it filed its reply in September 2025, it did not engage with the substance of what the UN Committee had found. It answered different questions […]

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AI-Powered Surveillance and the Prevent strategy

“When states transfer more power to private entities, the public loses. The government becomes a body designed to service the needs and interests of profit-seeking private entities rather than its citizens. Worse, citizens lose much of their power to hold governments accountable: the government abdicates and transfers responsibility to private actors against which citizens have fewer rights.”[1] This piece examines the creeping infrastructure of AI-powered surveillance in the UK and its implications for the Prevent strategy’s pre-crime framework. Digital ID, Palantir and Oracle In January of this year, the UK government dropped its plans for a mandatory digital ID. This came after almost 3 million signatures on a parliamentary petition opposing digital IDs.[2] Several corporations were in talks of implementing the digital ID apparatus. Palantir Technologies, named after the all-seeing stone in The Lord of the Rings,[3] dropped out of the bid back in October, citing a lack of public […]

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Southport Inquiry highlights how Prevent deprofessionalises public services

The Southport Inquiry embodies our warning that the Prevent duty has created conditions in which teachers, social workers and other frontline professionals are increasingly unable to act on their own expertise, and are required to defer to a counter-terrorism framework, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. In January of 2025, then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced there would be a public inquiry into the Southport attack that took the lives of 3 young girls, injured many more and left their families and the nation in grief. Following the trial of the perpetrator, Axel Rudukubana, it had become public knowledge that he had been known to several agencies and referred to Prevent three times. The inquiry was described by the Home Secretary as a way to “get to the truth of what happened and what needs to change”. The next day Prime Minister Keir Starmer re-emphasised the fact that the perpetrator had been […]

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Revealed: Babies and Muslims lost in a flood of Home Office statistics on Prevent strategy

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 […]

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How is the Prevent duty in Scotland implemented and who is standing against it?

Legal guidance compels the Prevent duty in Scotland so public authorities must implement the policy. A closer look at key differences in their approach provides insights for action and directs us to the organisations resisting the Prevent duty in Scotland. By Zara W. Tahir National security, and by extension, counter terrorism, remains a reserved matter in Scotland, and therefore under Westminster control.  However, one arm of the counter-terorrism strategy, the Prevent duty, requires the cooperation of public institutions north of the border, many of which are devolved.  This tension between reserved and devolved powers has led to key differences in how the Prevent duty is implemented in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, particularly England. Scottish MPs voice concerns with Prevent  In 2015, the Counterterrorism and Security Act was debated for five days in the UK Parliament. MPs raised concerns about its application in Scotland; these criticisms of the […]

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