Rising Prevent referrals and the runaway train of mass surveillance

Over 10,000 people were referred to the Prevent programme between October 2024 to September 2025, according to the government’s latest figures. This is an alarming increase of almost 40% compared to the previous year, reportedly due to a rise in referrals following the Southport attack in July 2024. As usual, the majority of those referred were under 18, with almost 400 children under 10s being referred to the counterterrorism programme. The release of these figures raise more questions than they answer:

Why are hundreds of children under the age of ten being referred to a counterterrorism programme?

Is this really the best way that to address concerns involving primary school aged children.

Why do so many of those referred – over a third in the latest figures – have a mental health or a neurodiversity condition?

Is it because, as an internal Home Office document, seen by the Financial Times found, “sometimes practitioners made referrals to Prevent to try to expedite mental health and neurodiversity support and diagnosis”. Why do teachers and social workers feel that referring someone to a counter-terrorism programme as a potential terrorist is the only way they will get help? Why are we investing in a counter-terrorism programme and not better mental health services?

Why do so many referrals to an ideology-based programme not involve an ideology?

Referrals where there was ‘no fixed ideology’ still made up over 56% of total referrals in the year up to September 2025. Previously, a report by the Home Affairs Committee found that “Prevent is becoming saturated with non-ideological cases, many of which would be better supported through health, education or community-based interventions rather than through a counter-terrorism lens”.

Why is the government not prioritising these alternative interventions rather than expanding the scope of the programme by creating more categories for referral?

A flawed ideology-based programme

Prevent is a pre-crime programme that aims to divert children and adults who may be “vulnerable to radicalisation” from going on to commit terrorism-related crimes. The vast majority of those who are referred will never have committed a crime. They may not even know that they have been referred.

A Guardian investigation found that one Prevent document included “believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism”. In recent years, the trend has been towards an increase in referrals relating to ‘right wing’ ideology – in 2024-2025, these rose by 42%.

There are now 16 categories for ideological concerns, including right wing, left wing, environment extremism, Incel and Islamist extremism.

The surveillance behind the figures

The government’s figures don’t provide transparency about the extent of surveillance that children and adults who are referred to Prevent will face, potentially for the rest of their lives.

People are supposedly referred to Prevent so they can be diverted from terrorism. Referrals are stored within a national Prevent database, regardless of whether they meet the threshold to be reviewed by a Channel panel. Last year’s figures show that over 80% of referrals were not adopted as a Channel case. That’s over 8,000 people, who have been found not to be at risk of extremist behaviour, who will have their data held for a minimum of six years, and potentially for the rest of their life.

The rationale for this minimum retention period is to consider the possibility of “re-offending” – even though people are not referred to Prevent for committing crimes. Those affected may not know that they have even been referred to Prevent or that their data is being held in this way.

For those people who are adopted as a Channel case, the surveillance is more extreme and can last a lifetime. In 2023, ORG received a response to a Freedom of Information request, which showed that their data could be secretly sent to airports, ports and immigration services and the Home Office. This is potentially a lifetime of being surveilled and stopped at borders because of views they expressed as a child.

Police-Led Partnerships

This violation of people’s rights is compounded when the person referred to Prevent is managed under a police-led partnership (PLP) process, rather than the multi-agency ‘Channel’ process.

Cases dealt with under a PLP are deemed unsuitable for Channel, but are still considered Prevent-relevant due to certain “risk” factors. This can include cases where people or, where the subject is a child, their guardians, have refused to engage with a Channel intervention. It can even be triggered by something as minor as being involved in a sticker or flyer campaign for certain causes, such as Palestinian solidarity. And because these cases are dealt with covertly, the individual does not have knowledge of their continued targeting, nor are there any clear means to challenge their surveillance. Sitting within this covert space, being neither wholly owned by policing or by counter-terrorism, there appears to be no oversight or parliamentary scrutiny of data sharing, processing and storage.

The expansion of Prevent is an expansion of the surveillance state that is stigmatising the young and vulnerable. The statutory duty has transformed trusted public sector workers into agents of counter terror policing, and those in need of support into subjects of suspicion.

Instead of relying on surveillance, suspicion, and continual expansion of definitions of extremism, we need a real investment in education, community health services and local infrastructure. We need to invest in social cohesion, rather than demonising and excluding people, which only leaves them more vulnerable to predation.

“No other liberal democracy has compelled such a large swathe of professionals to participate in a counter‑terrorism programme and expanded the national security state to such an extent.”