While all eyes were on the Prime Minister’s big ‘plan for change’ announcement today, the government also chose this morning to release some new data to the public. One of the reports published today includes the latest Prevent stats – and they paint a rather interesting picture. Between March 2023 and 2024, there were a staggering 6,922 referrals to the programme which when broken down reveal an uptick in cases being referred due to ‘Islamist concerns’, a rise of over 130 from the previous year. How very interesting…
The gap between referrals for extreme right wing behaviour and Islamist concerns has narrowed notably in the year ending March 2024, with the number of extreme right wing referrals remaining fairly similar to those recorded in previous reports. Meanwhile, concerns about Islamist radicalisation saw a rise in referrals by 5 per cent on the previous year – although cases overall are still much lower than the 2017 peak of nearly 4,000 annual referrals. Cases referred over ‘school massacre’ concerns have been increasing slightly year on year since 2021 and – rather bafflingly – those cases flagged to Prevent over ‘incel’ concerns shot up during Q4. Cuffing season going down badly, perhaps?
Those most likely to be reported to the programme are boys aged between 11 and 15, with this age group curiously accounting for an increased proportion of referrals each year since 2020. And England’s east coast doesn’t come out of all this particularly well, either – with the highest numbers of Prevent referrals coming from the South East and North East, where figures stand at 1,200 and 1,040 respectively. Crikey.
Take a look at how the figures have changed over the last seven years here…
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