Why Prevent failed – and how to fix it

William Shawcross’s long-awaited review of Prevent – the Government’s counter-radicalisation programme – is one of the boldest official documents of recent times. As such, it constitutes a radical reappraisal of a key state policy which has gone seriously off-piste and is in urgent need of rebalancing.

Much of the critique of Prevent has historically come from Islamists – who contend that it singles out Muslims for particular obloquy. For a programme that cost the Home Office a little less than £50 million per annum in 2020-1, Prevent commands a lot of attention.  

In his comprehensive ‘anatomy lesson’ published today, Shawcross lays bare in painstaking detail the ways in which Prevent has been faltering – but for a quite different set of reasons from those given by its loudest detractors.

He paints a picture of a highly bureaucratised system that has become profoundly unbalanced in ideological terms – with resources dissipated on multiple forms of mission creep.