- ‘Prevent’s targeting of Muslim children will now only be more stringent with increased surveillance.’
- ORC have stated that Prevent is causing significant harm to children.
According to digital rights campaigners, children referred to the UK’s Prevent counter-terrorism program risk having their data retained indefinitely, potentially marking them for life even without any need for intervention. Open Rights Group (ORG) expressed alarm over the disproportionate practice, stressing that minor behaviour could lead to lifelong suspicion and repercussions across various aspects of children’s lives.
“The implication is that we could hold a generation of children in permanent suspicion with no means of redress. Worse than criminalisation, all of these children could be impacted through potentially various facets of their lives because of one ill-thought through Prevent referral”, they said.
The report criticised opaque data management, noting that Prevent referrals were being stored not only in a national database but also in other police and local authority records.
ORG called for an immediate halt on Prevent referrals and for the Prevent Duty, which since 2015 has required public sector institutions including schools to report people considered at risk of becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism, to be abolished, it said.
It concluded that Prevent was causing specific harm to children, citing cases in which young children had been denied education opportunities as a consequence of referrals, the report added.
It cautioned that a reported rise in referrals since October 7th and William Shawcross’s review of Prevent which last year called for an increased focus on “Islamist extremism”, ‘could lead to the disproportionate targeting of Muslims and further surveillance of this already marginalised community’,” the report cautioned.
Government ministers stated this week that the Prevent program had been “strengthened” in the past year in response to the Shawcross review. Home Secretary James Cleverly said that the escalated events in the Middle East had “highlighted the importance of Prevent.”
However, in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Shawcross remarked that the government had acted on numerous suggestions he had made but that these were “not enough”. He urged Prevent to focus more on what he labeled as…”Hamas support network” in the UK.
“The government has accepted Shawcross’s recommendations, indicating that Prevent training could over-emphasise vigilance around Muslim communities due to a perception that this group is mostly responsible for terrorism – a dangerous and racist assumption”, asserted Sophia Akram-programme manager at ORC.
