Last month the Home Affairs Select Committee published its report on New Forms of Extremism, and concluded that Prevent is not fit for purpose.
This reflects Prevent Watch’s concerns, which we set out in our written evidence to the Committee, and which are based on over a decade of frontline casework.
However, the report does not address the central issue. Instead, as the title of the report suggests, it starts from the premise that there is a growing and evolving “extremism” problem to which policies like Prevent are struggling to respond.
Our evidence and experience shows that this perception is, in large part, produced by Prevent itself and reinforced by shifting political priorities which shape how “extremism” is defined and acted upon.
The fact that “extremism” is not and has never been “fixed” nor legally defined has allowed for it to be continually expanded; this has resulted in the problems identified by the Committee of people being drawn into Prevent’s scope without clear evidence of a threat.
This same flawed framing is reflected in the Committee’s suggestion of a wider safeguarding approach, as others including the previous Independent Prevent Commissioner Lord David Anderson have proposed.
However, such systems already exist and did so prior to the introduction of Prevent in the form of broader public services. What we have seen is a weakening of these support services by the expansion of the counter-terrorism mindset in spaces where it does not belong.
This has displaced the professional judgement, trust and relationships on which effective safeguarding depends.
Unless this starting point is addressed – namely the way extremism is defined and the flawed logic and normalisation of Prevent – any new approach will repeat the same problems.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
