Britain’s Prevent Strategy: Always Changing, Always the Same?

Abstract

This chapter analyses Prevent’s development since its introduction in 2006, alongside discussion of its controversies. It considers both Prevent’s changing content and priorities over its distinct phases and its significant controversies that have endured despite such changes. Critics argue that Prevent disproportionately targets British Muslims as a ‘suspect community’, as well as securitising society and undermining community cohesion. These critiques have persisted despite the very significant shift of focus from community-based engagement work in the ‘Prevent 1' phase to the ‘Prevent 2' phase and Prevent Duty concern with identifying individual vulnerability to radicalisation. Here, this chapter considers how we can understand both Prevent’s changes and the controversies around the 2015 introduction of the ‘Prevent Duty’, alongside their implications for front-line educational practitioners and institutions.