[Thread] I’ll cover some of the serious issues w/ Prevent stats just released, which can be summarised under the following: 1) Erasure of impact pre-referral 2) Introduction of ‘mixed/uncertain/unstable’ category and 3) illogically comparing Far-Right and Muslims referrals /1 https://twitter.com/TerrorismPolice/status/1207655826174943233

1)This is obvious but it must stated again and again. Prevent statistics do not cover rejected in-house referrals or the impact of the policy outside of referrals at all. So if a safeguarding lead rejects a referral, it's not in here /2

This means that if, let's say, 20,000 Muslims were discussed for Prevent referral within a school, but only a fraction of this went through, then those are the numbers you're seeing. Gov has insisted it doesn’t collect info on in-house (within the school/NHS) rejections /3

It also erases impact of Prevent outside of stats. E.g. in one case I discuss, staff prioritised a patient’s potential radicalisation over her severe domestic abuse once she put on a hijab. A referral was never made but it completely altered healthcare discussion and situation /4

2) The whole ‘mixed/uncertain/unstable’ (MUU) category is absolutely wild: it amounts to such a high % of referrals (a whopping 38%) while being absolutely meaningless. How can someone possibly pose a terrorism threat if their ideology isn’t clear? what is going on here /5

Huge problem: the gov isn’t disclosing the ethnicities of this MUU category. My gut feeling, which I can elaborate on, this group has a very high % of Muslims suffering from mental health issues (and pot. gangs), but have not displayed any explicit ideological behaviour /6

I write about this much more extensively. In short, the effective number of Muslim referrals (they dont say because they only categorise by cause) could be much higher. MUU is the basest category that has ever been introduced without, you know, explaining what it even means/7

3) It's very troubling the way ‘rise of Far-Right’ is presented. The gov wants to celebrate there are finally more Far-Right than Muslim referrals. Again sleight of hand: groups are presented in relation to one another rather than actual demographics. What does this mean? /8

Imagine a population where 30 ppl believe there should be a UK caliphate, and 300k believe Muslims/Islam pose an issue to society. 15 are referred for ‘Islamist’ and 150 for ‘Far-Right’. The gov says “see, Prevent isn’t racist, there’s 10x more white referrals than Muslims” /9

But in reality, there had to be way more than 10x relative to British demographics—300k referrals to be precise. This will never happen in the current political climate because the number of people who might believe Muslims/Islam is a problem is greater than 300k /10

Following Boris Johnson’s outrageous Islamophobic statements (and other MPs who’ve said worse), the Prevent policy would then also have to include a large number of politicians who themselves would be Prevent-worthy. But it doesn’t. Because it serves power /11

In my research which I will present publicly later, I go into further detail why ‘pushing CVE/Prevent harder towards the Far-Right’ doesn’t address racism; it creates a colour-blind veneer, dismissing the issue of ethnonationalism while deflecting from the charge of racism /end