It was 4am when the phone call came through. The FBI had contacted Scotland Yard, who in turn had contacted my local Police force who had decided I should immediately attend a strategy meeting. A 15 year old boy called Kieron* had just disclosed in a US chat forum that he was going to kill his classmates that day and the investigating officers were unclear what ‘ideology’ might be influencing his intentions. However, the issue wasn’t identifying if Kieron followed a violent ideology, the problem was identifying which ideology he followed. As it turned out, it was all of them.
The UK’s Prevent strategy is a focused, social care approach to reducing the risk from terrorism, identifying what factors are pushing someone towards violence and addressing them within a framework called Channel. This operates as a safeguarding board that can triage the risks and identify a solution that is bespoke to the individual, regardless of what those underlying factors might be, which is voluntary, consensual and highly effective. Since 2012, over 1500 people considered vulnerable to exploitation from terrorist influences have been adopted as cases for this confidential programme of support.
In some cases, the ideology is obvious, well embedded and appears to be the primary factor that is drawing an individual towards supporting or engaging in Terrorism Act (TACT) offences. In these circumstances, identifying and challenging that ideology is likely to be an essential part of how you would seek to reduce that individual’s vulnerability, and the risk posed to themselves and to the public.
However, for an increasing number of individuals being referred to Prevent for support, ideological drivers can appear mixed, unclear or unstable. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this group commonly present with multiple and complex vulnerabilities (such as criminality, substance misuse, social isolation, poor mental or emotional health, and so on). In such cases it often appears that people are being drawn towards an extremist ideology, group or cause because it seems to provide them with a ‘solution’ to the other problems in their lives, or an outlet to express problematic and dangerous behaviours that they may have developed.
We have seen many similar and often overlapping Prevent case examples, including individuals who: demonstrate an interest in multiple extremist ideologies in parallel, such as Salafist militant jihadism (al-Qaeda, Daesh) and white supremacy (National Action); switch from one ideology to another over time; target a ‘perceived other’ of some kind (perhaps based upon gender or another protected characteristic), but do not otherwise identify with one particular terrorist ideology or cause; are obsessed with massacres, or extreme or mass violence, without specifically targeting a particular group (e.g. ‘high school shootings’); and/or may be vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism out of a sense of duty, or a desire for belonging, rather than out of any strongly held beliefs.
The Terrorism Act (TACT) defines terrorism as the use or threat of action designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The Act does not define or limit what is meant by “political, religious, racial or ideological cause”, nor does it restrict “ideological cause” to being political, religious or racial, or to being solely those ideologies held or promoted by proscribed organisations. The Act certainly does not stipulate that a perpetrator has to have a long-standing and deep-seated belief in the ideology or cause that he or she is ostensibly supporting by committing a TACT offence.
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William Baldet | Radio Free (2020-02-24T23:00:00+00:00) Prevent and the Terrorism Act: we need to talk about Kieron. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/24/prevent-and-the-terrorism-act-we-need-to-talk-about-kieron/
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