The UK’s Prevent Duty within school safeguarding duties – adolescent neurodivergence, austerity and counter-terrorism law.

• In Event: EXTREME Panel 3. Preventing and countering violent extremism

Abstract

The UK Prevent Duty (PD) – introduced under s26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 – requires specified authorities to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. The Duty, in relation to children (people under the age of 18), is presented in policy documents as forming part of schools’ wider statutory safeguarding responsibilities, including in relation to grooming, organised crime and mental health. However, despite a shared terminology of ‘vulnerability’, the processes associated with the PD, and the law-enforcement framework within which they occur, differ substantively from those associated with other forms of child safeguarding. Alongside long-standing academic criticism of the PD, the referral mechanisms and programme itself has come under renewed focus in the national press, with a number of high-profile murders committed by adolescent offenders who were within the Prevent apparatus. Alongside its legitimacy, the efficacy of the scheme has come into question.

In this paper, we will discuss findings from a study conducted across a large urban area of England. Drawing upon interviews with school safeguarding leads, counter-terrorism police and local authority Prevent coordinators, we outline the challenges of managing evolving issues with adolescent mental health and neurodivergence within the current safeguarding landscape, typified by successive austerity policies and resource skewed towards the PD framework that finds referrals unsuitable for the programme. This paper offers reflections on the intersection of neurodivergence, adolescent vulnerability and the legal definition of terrorism in the UK. The paper relates to activity by the ESC Policing Working Group.

Authors

• Sam Jordan Cole, University of Birmingham

• Marianne Wade, University of Birmingham

• Laura Noszlopy, University of Birmingham