No Government policy has come under fire as the ill-conceived Prevent extremism programme. Its launch was under Labour and was lauded as an innovative part of the country’s counter-terrorism strategy some 15 years ago. Instead of being abolished, the brash strategy was compounded by the Tories when its remit was broadened during the fateful coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2011 to include non-violent extremism.
Not only does it involve law enforcement officers, but a statutory duty has now been imposed on teachers, faith leaders, prisons, the probation services, doctors and local authority departments to identify people supposedly at risk of being drawn into extremism.
The policy, which targets Muslims from the cradle to the grave, has many failings and has often been called counterproductive. In 2016, Cage human rights organisation exposed that the use of Extremism Risk Guidance (ERG) 22+ by Prevent was both flawed and unscientific when purportedly looking for clues when assessing whoever is claimed to be at risk of becoming a violent extremist. In a new disturbing report, it warns that the use of the methodology has resulted in officers attempting to remove children from their family, despite being unverifiable.
“The fact that these policies are based on a faulty ‘science’ developed in the form of the ERG22+ is significant, for the courts have institutionalised a theory that has little basis in fact – with devastating results on families and children in particular,” the report warned.
Two years ago, some 140 academics and experts, including Noam Chomsky, signed an open letter protesting against the lack of scrutiny of the scientific evidence underpinning the discredited strategy but to no avail.
Like many other strands of successive governments’ anti-terrorism laws, Prevent has been found to be toxic and must be scrapped. It is based on such false premises and undefined notions of radicalism and extremism that the programme should never have been given the light of day.