How ideology infiltrated Prevent Groupthink thrives in counter-terrorism

It is customary in the aftermath of an atrocity for the spotlight to fall on Prevent, one of the pillars of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy. It has been under renewed scrutiny since last year’s Southport murders, after it came to light that perpetrator Axel Rudakubana was referred on three occasions. Then, last Wednesday, a review of Prevent revealed that Ali Harbi Ali, the radicalised killer of Sir David Amess MP, was released too swiftly from one of its programmes.

Prevent has become a well-covered — and, by extension, notorious — brand. But this celebrity leads people to overestimate its power. Prevent, frequently described as a counter-terrorism programme but perhaps better understood as a funding stream covering several programmes, is small beans compared to the cost of traditional parts of state infrastructure dedicated to counter-terrorism. Because of how Prevent is structured, it is difficult to find overall figures; but its budget for the whole of London is reported to be somewhere in the low millions — a fraction of the £9 million the Mayor of London spent advertising the Ulez expansion.

So, what does it do? Prevent has three objectives: to tackle the causes of radicalisation, to safeguard those at risk of radicalisation, and to rehabilitate anyone who has been radicalised. Any risk related to non-ideological threats, such as psychological problems and violence obsessions, should — in theory — be picked up by the likes of the NHS and social services. However, many end up with Prevent, while specific and impending threats are handled by the police and security services.

To meet its remit, Prevent trains public-sector workers — especially teachers — to identify signs of vulnerability to extremism. Any risky parties are then referred to the Channel programme, where attempts are made to de-radicalise. To identify, triage and interact with those potential threats requires a high degree of cooperation between agencies, such as police, social workers, prisons, schools, local authorities, the NHS, and Government departments. Yet, as can be the case in complex systems, the lines of accountability can be blurred between agencies, and cases can be missed or closed prematurely.

This was reportedly a factor which led to Ali Harbi Ali leaving Prevent too quickly. Failures were identified in other recent cases, such as Usman Khan (who killed two people near London Bridge in 2019), Khairi Saadallah (who killed three people in Reading in 2020), Ahmed Hassan (the 2017 Parsons Green tube bomber), and Rudakubana. Having observed the process by which people are referred to Channel, I suspect the number of people identified as potentially risky compared with the resources to assess and triage is also a challenge.

But even if the identification and referral process were to work perfectly, what Prevent is trying to achieve is a tall order. Consider for a moment the probable efficacy of an initiative with no ability to compel people to engage, with limited resources and limited opportunities to intervene, in the face of all the factors that might radicalise someone. Imagine a psychologically troubled outcast, for whom hatred dressed up as a moral crusade provides his very existence with meaning, surrounding himself with affirming narratives and dreams of glory, and then pit those against a voluntary initiative which you might have heard about from one of your teachers at the school you hate. It’s hardly an even match.

As a result, Prevent also operates further upstream, developing counter-radicalisation narratives and providing grants to grassroots community groups to strengthen social cohesion. This creates opportunities for early intervention which might help to build resilience against radicalising forces, but the strategy comes with its own challenges. Firstly, Prevent money has found its way to the wrong groups on more than one occasion, funding those who, rather than countering radicalisation, were propagating it. Secondly, governments are most effective in shaping perspectives when their messages are ubiquitous and reinforced across all elements of the social and cultural fabric — as with “follow the science”. In practice, many Prevent initiatives will struggle to cut through the noise.

Given the obvious challenges, persistent threat and limited funding, why are policy officials trying to make an already unenviable task even harder by widening Prevent’s targets?

In 2023, William Shawcross’s “Independent Review into Prevent” recommended it refocus on the most acute threats to national security to maximise impact, along with some other sensible proposals which the Government mainly accepted. But, as a report from Policy Exchange last month notes, a leaked Home Office “Rapid Analytical Sprint” on extremism policy has since suggested taking the opposite approach. It proposed broadening the definition of extremism by conflating it with extreme violence and other forms of harm to society, while diluting the focus on the most pressing ideological threats. The same sprint appeared to equate Islamist extremism with more obscure ideologies that do not pose the same level of risk.

Perhaps officials are happy to broaden their definition of extremism because they overestimate the efficacy of their policies to overcome it. In my experience, many of those involved in social programmes — and to a lesser extent in Government — assume that their well-intentioned efforts make a meaningful difference. This, however, is rarely the case. Many social programmes concerned with influencing behaviour, when evaluated robustly, show weak or no positive effects at all. This is because across the domain, there is little tradition of reliably establishing cause and effect. As a result, incorrect assumptions are made about what influences behaviour, especially over the longer term. An often-quoted example is the “Scared Straight” intervention, which sought to deter young offenders from crime by exposing them to life inside prison. For many years, this was assumed to reduce offending — until proper assessment concluded it most likely increased it.

One of the few robust evaluations in this particular domain, conducted seven years ago, suggested that only a small handful of civil-society counter-radicalisation programmes had a positive effect. Given the average effectiveness of social programmes and the complexity of countering radicalisation, this is not surprising. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Prevent should give up, when it is still capable of playing an important part of our counter-terrorism strategy. But without good evaluation — something, incidentally, that is lacking across Government — there is no accountability, and overreach becomes a tempting way to inflate roles and egos. To systematically measure cause and effect and then adapt or cut programmes that do not work demands certain technical skills which are rare in law enforcement and adjacent fields. But more importantly, and perhaps even rarer, this sort of evaluation requires the willingness of policy officials to disappoint the civil-society groups whose programmes are failing.

Rigorous evaluation will tell officials if their programmes are having the desired effect, but the government should also consider the effect of rhetoric. The fear is that authorities’ overuse of the label “far-Right” is likely to increase rather than reduce support for the actual far-Right. The broadening of the Overton window, and normalisation of a term that should be reserved for genuine extremes, risks amplifying radical sentiments and undermining the credibility of the state at a time when trust in Government and national institutions has fallen to historic lows. In his report, Shawcross noted an imbalance between the narrowness with which Islamist extremism was defined by Prevent, and the breadth of definition applied to far-Right extremism, at times including mainstream Right-wing commentary with no connection to radicalisation. Officials have even suggested that watching comedy series such as Yes, Minister or The Thick of It could be red flags for far-Right extremism.

Since the Shawcross review, these more contentious perspectives may have been reconsidered. But more recently, Home Office officials have proposed that accusations of “two-tier policing” are examples of far-Right narratives. No doubt, malign actors would seek to capitalise on perceived grievances, but two-tier policing is not a myth: a YouGov survey last year showed that large proportions of the public see discrepancy in police treatment of different causes. The details of individual cases make comparisons difficult, but it is legitimate and a necessary component of policing by consent for the public to question inconsistencies in law enforcement decision-making.

This disconnect between officials and the public on two-tier policing is yet another symptom of the groupthink that has permeated much of the arts, academia, media, Government, and social and charitable sectors in recent years. It derives from a culture that has fundamentally degraded some of our most important national institutions.

In Britain, absent any political leadership prioritising cultural change within the public sector, mandarins may be tempted to wait out the eventual demise of a culture which prioritises ideological consistency over objective evaluation, intellectual rigour, and the effective function of public service. But the longer it takes, the longer tough policy areas such as counter-terrorism will continue to struggle.

Prevent plays an important role in Britain’s strategy against terrorism. Like in so many other areas of policy, we need to do it better. Understandably, the Government’s focus will be on improving visible outcomes in health, public safety, immigration and the economy. Yet to have any hope of its policies succeeding, it must also focus on that which is less visible: the culture of those institutions tasked with delivering them.