Infants in the UK have been referred to the government’s controversial Prevent counter-terrorism scheme hundreds of times since 2016, in what monitoring groups say has been a means of intimidating and scaring parents into engaging with officials.
Through a series of Freedom of Information requests by Hyphen, it was revealed that babies under the age of two were referred to Prevent 86 times between 2016-17 and 2023-24, with over two-thirds (59) of these referrals over so-called “Islamist” concerns. At the same time, children aged two to five were referred to Prevent a further 500 times.
The data was shared exclusively with City Hall Greens ahead of today’s Mayor’s Question Time, where Green Party London Assembly Member Benali Hamdache urged London Mayor Sadiq Khan to investigate the issue.
“Babies don’t have ideology. Babies don’t have extremism,” Hamdache told The New Arab. “A baby is learning how to sit up. A baby is learning how to crawl. They don’t know any of the things that were described.”
“I have to really question someone’s mentality when they’re referring a baby. They are really stigmatising, marginalising, criminalising an innocent being.”
The police were three times as likely to refer a baby or toddler to Prevent as education workers and nursing staff, according to the data. A total of 151 babies and toddlers were reported, and the policing sector made about 64 percent of these referrals, the data shows.
While the trend was picked up early on, it was difficult to prove until the data came through, because of the reasons given to justify the referrals. Prevent Watch, an organisation that supports people impacted by the scheme, found that the referrals were used as a method of intimidation.
“It was easy for police to make referrals on the children in the family to try and coerce that adult to engage with them and to speak to them,” Layla Aitlhadj, director of Prevent Watch, told The New Arab.
Read more on The New Arab.
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Revealed: Babies and Muslims lost in a flood of Home Office statistics on Prevent strategy
