Prevent not helping children fixated with violence, children's commissioner says
Summary
The UK government's Prevent program, designed to stop terrorism, is not able to help many children who are focused on violence but do not have a clear extremist belief. The children’s commissioner said more help is needed because many children show worrying behavior online and are often sent back to schools without further support.Key Facts
- Referrals of children to the Prevent program rose from 2,918 in 2016-17 to 4,715 in 2024-25.
- Most children referred do not show clear extremist beliefs, but are fixated on violence.
- The Prevent program mainly deals with terrorism linked to extremist ideologies like far-right or jihadist views.
- About 71% of child referrals had no specific extremist ideology identified.
- The children’s commissioner said many children are influenced by harmful online groups and illegal content about self-harm and school shootings.
- Prevent is effective for children involved in ideological extremism but struggles with cases focused on violence without ideology.
- The commissioner suggests that referrals should go through local teams that include police and safeguarding experts, not just Prevent.
- She also called on media regulators to better control harmful content online.
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