LONDON: Britain’s counter-extremism strategy, Prevent, has caused thousands of people to be unnecessarily referred over ungrounded fears of terrorism by teachers and health professionals, a report has claimed.
Published by the Counter Extremism Group think tank, the report found that Prevent’s vague classification of people “vulnerable to extremism” meant that only one-tenth of referrals had been escalated to the Channel program, where individuals most at risk of extremism are dealt with directly.
The report was published before the internal Home Office review of the Prevent program due at the end of the year, The Times reported.
The Prevent program has faced significant criticism over its apparent targeting of British Muslim communities.
Islamist extremists accounted for only 22 percent of referrals to the Prevent program last year, despite Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, labeling Islamist extremism as the greatest threat to British national security.
“Vulnerability indicators” used by Prevent are “vague and lack clear connections to violent radicalization,” the report claims.
Indicators include “people with mental health issues or learning disabilities,” religious converts who are “less well-informed about their faith” and “young offenders and people vulnerable to offending.”
The report said: “This suggests that Prevent is casting a very wide net, and may not be working as efficiently as it can.
“Referring so many cases which are possibly unrelated to extremism in any serious way risks further damaging the image of Prevent and strengthening claims that it is a policy which securitizes the state’s relationship with its citizens.”
More than half of referrals to Prevent concerned people with a “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology.”
However, the program has also faced criticism over its failure to stop terrorism, with several high-profile terrorists carrying out attacks despite being known to Prevent.
Last year, Conservative MP David Amess was killed by Ali Harbi Ali, who had been referred to the program seven years earlier by a schoolteacher.
Khairi Saadallah, who stabbed three people to death in 2020, as well as Usman Khan, who stabbed five people on London Bridge in 2019, were also known to Prevent.