PREVENT: thought policing children
There are significant human rights and safeguarding concerns about the government’s PREVENT programme.
PREVENT is a strand of the government’s counter terrorism measures which state the aim is “to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”.
Marshalling official focus, resources and information sharing with little evidence as to the connection between the apparently problematic yet entirely non-criminal behaviour and support for terrorism PREVENT has resulted in intrusive state interference, surveillance and policing of children and their families. Children under 15 made up 27% of PREVENT referrals and those aged 15-20 another 29% (2017-18). Over one third of all referrals came through schools.
“Prevent is a security service, not a social service.”
Suella Braverman,
Former Home Secretary
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Rights report on UK
“The Committee is deeply concerned about the chilling effect of counter-terrorism measures on the right of children to freedom of expression”
Committee on the Rights of the Child
Concluding observations on the combined sixth and seventh reports of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (2023)
“All children are subject to scrutiny under the Prevent duty from the moment they start school until they leave. The education sector provides over a third of all referrals”
Professor John Holmwood and Dr Layla Aitlhadj
People’s Review of PREVENT: A Response to the Shawcross Report (2023)
Safeguarding Trojan horse
State intervention is couched in the language of ‘support’ and ‘safeguarding’ children and access to children and information sharing is justified on this basis yet all the evidence suggests it is about policing and surveillance and is experienced by the children and families – and wider communities – as intensely intrusive and distressing. As no crime is committed, or alleged, children do not even have the protections they would be entitled to under PACE powers, and are interviewed by officers without any requirement for family or indeed any appropriate adult to be present.
“…like any safeguarding mechanism, it is far better to receive referrals which turn out not to be of concern than for someone who genuinely needs support to be missed.”
“…the nature of both the developing PREVENT legislation and the composition of the Trojan Horse investigation team signals a trend already underway of addressing controversial issues of crime and security by clothing it in the more palatable garb of child protection or safeguarding.”
“The duty targets children, including those with mental health problems, putting their welfare at risk. In some cases, children have been reported to the authorities for simply talking about video games at school.”
Ruth Ehrlich, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Liberty
Liberty Responds to the Shawcross Review of PREVENT (2023)
“Prevent, we argue, represents an abuse of children and young people done in the name of ‘safeguarding’ within a framework of their perceived vulnerability to ‘radicalisation’.”
“Prevent might be branded as safeguarding, but in reality it is surveillance and policing. We need a new prevention strategy based on genuinely protecting children and putting their welfare first.”
Leo Ratledge, Legal & Policy Director at CRIN
Preventing Safeguarding: the Prevent strategy and children’s rights (2022)
“The Prevent programme especially blurs the line between social workers and Prevent officers within local authority child safeguarding practice. As an independent organisation advocating for the rights of children to care and protection, we are duly concerned at the emphasis and changing strategy for schools”
Mor Dioum, Victoria Climbié Foundation UK
The People’s Review of Prevent (2022)
Incompatible with human rights
Amnesty International have compiled an extensive report detailing all of the ways in which PREVENT violates human rights requirements and other rights organisations and bodies, including the UNCRC, have flagged their many concerns.
“The data provided by [the People’s Review of PREVENT] underscore the critical need to directly attend to deep concerns about discrimination, stigma, de facto criminalisation of individuals particularly children, privacy violations, intrusion on the freedom to practice one’s religious beliefs, and negative impact on the right to education, health, and participation in public affairs for targeted individuals, primarily Muslims.”
“the Committee urges the State party to guarantee the right of all children to freedom of expression and to practise freely their religion or belief, including by…ensuring that counter-terrorism measures do not undermine children’s rights to freedom of expression, opinion and religion, and that children can exercise these rights without threats or intimidation.”
Committee on the Rights of the Child
Concluding observations on the combined sixth and seventh reports of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (2023)
“Efforts by institutions and individuals to comply with Prevent are leading to violations of people’s rights to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of peaceful assembly, and critically, the right to equality and nondiscrimination….the UK must scrap the Prevent strategy in order to comply with its international human rights obligations.”
Amnesty International
This is the Thought Police (2023)
Expanding prism of risk
One impact of PREVENT – and with ill-defined ‘signs’ of risk more widely – is that they make everything seem risky, blur the lines between what should genuinely alert people to what should alert concerns about a child and normal varied life.
The harm done is not only to those who are referred as part of PREVENT. Putting trusted adults under an obligation to assess, share and report on children’s behaviour and what they say threatens the relationship of trust in every classroom and youth space, particularly with Muslim children and with any group which feels itself to be under observation. This is a concern with information sharing without consent more generally but is heightened given the focus of PREVENT on what children think and their ideas. Normal child development is treated as a potentially suspicious sign.
Children need the freedom to work through ideas, to express things in anger, to be provocative, to be wrong and to change their minds. Feeling upset at injustice and confused about the world should not be a sign of risk.
Involvement in activism and trying to change the world should not be viewed through the lens of suspicion. Neither should an increased interest in religion, particularly practicing Islam.
The danger of ‘signs’ is that normal life becomes suspicious. The parametres of PREVENT are so wide and loose that almost anything and everything could be included.
“The risk of radicalisation will vary greatly, but no area, institution or body is risk free…Any learner who uses the internet can be at risk of online abuse.”
“Push factors may include a learner feeling: isolated – they do not belong – they have no purpose – low self-esteem – their aspirations are unmet – anger or frustration – a sense of injustice – confused about life or the world – real or perceived personal grievances”
“There is no single model of a person’s radicalisation journey or single profile of a radicalised person. Frontline professionals, when deciding whether to make a referral, should consider whether they believe the person they are concerned about may be on a pathway that could lead to terrorism.”
Suppression of dissent
With possible ‘signs of concern’ including dissatisfaction with the government and a sense of injustice the suppression of dissent and of freedom of expression has been an inevitable impact of PREVENT.
Since 2011 non-violent ‘extremism’ has been included under the remit of the programme as well as the deliberate and stated aim to prevent funding reaching “organisations with extremist views who do not support mainstream British values”
Muslim children, families and communities are the key targets but Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matters and other movements have also been flagged by the government as of potential interest to PREVENT. Opposition to the occupation by Israel of Palestine, as well as to the ongoing atrocities, have also been flagged under PREVENT with examples including venues refusing to allow rooms to be used.
“The Prevent duty is having a hugely detrimental effect on Muslims, as well as on activists campaigning for anti-racist, environmental, and other social justice causes, who feel unable to campaign for what they believe in for fear of ending up on a ‘list’. “
Ruth Ehrlich, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Liberty
Liberty Responds to the Shawcross Review of PREVENT (2023)
“Social worker: “So am I right in saying you were protesting against our government?”
Case study: Mum of 8-year-old questioned about attending a peaceful protest
The People’s Review of Prevent (2022)
“A Prevent police officer noted ‘the increased use of the term “conspiracy theorist”’, and a need ‘to question whether an interest in conspiracy theories is an indicator that someone is an extremist’. The officer added that ‘wider questions about holding controversial opinions and where these sit within the sphere of radicalisation have come to the fore’.”
Amnesty International
This is the Thought Police (2022)
“a chilling effect on the lives and freedoms of thousands of innocent people [including] modifying their behaviour [and] refraining from joining campaigning groups and attending protests or expressing their religious and political views”.
Ilyas Nagdee, Racial Justice Director at Amnesty
Quoted in Open Democracy: Kids referred to counter-terror police amid crackdown on Palestine support (2024)
Information sharing
Information sharing that is mandated under the ‘safeguarding’ banner can instead lead to serious and lifelong negative impacts for children and their families.
Organisations – including the Victoria Climbié Foundation UK and PREVENT Watch – report children and families concerns around the worrying and often incorrect ways their information was being kept.
Investigation by Liberty in 2019 found that Counter-terrorism had a centrally managed Prevent Case Management database although there were numerous other police databases. Information will also be held in numerous other places.
Open Rights Group have produced an extensive report into the harm creating through this data sharing detailing a process which can include the sharing of information, whether considered significant or not, with a large number of partner organisations. With referrals about children the information recorded and shared this can include information about siblings, parents and other family members.
The Open Rights Group concluded that there was no valid policing purpose of keeping the personal data held under PREVENT. That the processed under Prevent amounted to unfair processing and that it does not meet the requirements of necessity and proportionality and that to justify referrals ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ were conflated.
“When Sami was six years old, his personal data was held in a database controlled by Counter-terrorism Police, accessible to local forces through myriad other systems. For what reason could a six-year-old boy be of interest to Counter-terrorism? The reason was that his father refused to engage with Prevent…”
“…most people do not realise that referring an individual places that individual’s data directly with the security services as well as potentially onto local authority and multi-agency partners.”
Open Rights Group
PREVENT and the Pre-Crime State: How Unaccountable Data Sharing is Harming a Generation (2024)
High Court rules against data retention
In 2020, in a case brought by Deighton Pierce Glynn, a High Court ruled that the data retention of an 11-year-old child’s data was unlawful and disproportionate interference with his right to private life
The boy had been referred to Prevent when he was 11 but no counter-terrorism concerns or evidence of radicalisation were found. However, the Metropolitan Police Service refused to delete the child’s data. Law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, acting for the claimant, said the result was information about the boy’s referral being held across 10 separate databases, accessible to the police, local authorities and the Home Office.
The court found that the retention of his data was in breach of his Article 8 right under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as sections 35 and 39 of the Data Protection Act 2018 – that the processing of personal data for any of the law enforcement purposes must be lawful, fair and kept no longer than necessary.
It is notable that the Metropolitan Police claimed that despite the lack of counter-terrorism concerns that the information needed to be retained for safeguarding reasons.
“it is often a patchwork of information gathered over time which allows for a complete assessment of risks and safeguarding needs. The content of the information held in relation to the Claimant gives rise to safeguarding concerns, which necessitates the retention of the data.”
Metropolitan Police witness statement
Reported in Local Government Lawyer: Court finds retention of data obtained under Prevent Strategy when claimant was 11 year old unlawful (2020)