Expert View: The harms of Prevent scrutiny of children
The Shawcross Review does not address the harms of Prevent scrutiny of children, and specifically Muslim children. Rather, its recommendations will accentuate them.
22 May 2023
The People's Review of Prevent
The People’s Review of Prevent is an alternative review to the Government Shawcross Review.
This review provides a voice to the people most impacted by the Prevent Duty.
Prevent is described as ‘safeguarding’ children from harms. However, under Prevent, safeguarding is focused on protecting the wider public from children believed to be ‘risky’, rather than protecting children from harms.
Throughout our report we present case studies that show how real these harms can be and the distress they cause to children and their families and carers.
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NEU2023: Prevent in education and civil liberties in the classroom
A closer look at the function of Prevent in education reveals serious errors by William Shawcross, both in his recommendations and in his understanding of Prevent in schools.
11 April 2023
The Guardian: UK MPs studying plans for child-specific terrorism orders
New legal child-specific terrorism orders should be brought in to tackle the growing numbers being arrested, the official adviser on terrorism law has told the UK government.
2 January 2023
FE News: Department for Education launches Prevent Self-Assessment Tool
The Department for Education has released its new Prevent Duty Self-Assessment Tool for Schools, designed to help Designated Safeguarding Leads and wider Senior Leadership Teams implement Prevent.
17 December 2022
Expert View: The Prevent strategy is not about preventing terrorism
An excerpt from the People’s Review of Prevent, on the Prevent strategy and children’s rights, data collection, bogus claims of ‘success’ and why Prevent must be delinked from Manchester.
13 December 2022
The Expert View: Prevent, Data Collection and Children’s Rights
The UK’s Prevent counter-extremism strategy involves data collection and retention that makes it a vast form of surveillance that can remain with a person for life, even when that person
7 December 2022
Expert View: RSE and Prevent – what parents are asking
Recently, Prevent Watch spoke about Prevent to parents who had gathered to discuss changes in the school curriculum with regards RSE.
22 November 2022
Expert View: How the UK Prevent strategy ‘adultifies’ young children
The UK Prevent strategy is contributing to undue moral panic and harming young people in the name of “counter-terrorism”, writes Prof John Holmwood, co-author of the People’s Review of Prevent. Here’s a summary of his original piece which appeared in the Middle East Eye. The cases of Child Q and other children have cast a light on the “adultification” of Black children, but this approach also features in the UK Prevent strategy, Britain’s counter-extremism tool, although in this case it is applied to ethnic minority children generally. Under Prevent, children are regularly subjected to interviews by counter-terrorism police without a responsible adult being present. This is occurring to thousands of children each year. Yet they are not under suspicion of a terrorism offence, only of potentially coming under the influence of an extremist “ideology”. Children under 15 make up around a third of all referrals (there were 7,318 referrals in
15 August 2022
Middle East Eye: What is the alternative to Prevent?
Prevent doesn’t work and never will. The way forward for the UK rests in the realm of ideas and their healthy expression, not in trying to police thoughts, writes John Holmwood. In the People’s Review of Prevent (published in February this year), we showed that Prevent is not working, but also that it couldn’t work. What, then, is its purpose? Why do some people continue to advocate for it and in terms that involve the hostile name-calling of Prevent’s critics, including that they are extremists and enabling terrorism. The answer is that it serves an ideological and populist purpose by scapegoating minority communities.
14 June 2022
The PROP Expert View: Government’s true face is emerging through its about-turns on Prevent
Prevent was never about safeguarding, but nor is it counter-terrorism, writes Layla Aitlhadj. Even in cases where individuals were potentially victims of other crimes, Prevent conflated and obscured the duty of safeguarding and ignored the perpetrator, to rather focus on the victim. An example of this is when a young boy allegedly being “groomed” online was referred by his teacher; the child was interrogated, his mother pressurised to comply – but not a single thing further was heard about the online “groomer”, the perpetrator in the case. Surely, if Prevent was ever about preventing terrorism, the perpetrator would have been tracked down and dealt with by security services? Source: Government’s true face of aggression is emerging through its about-turns on Prevent – The Peoples Review of Prevent
10 June 2022