In 2014, six men from Portsmouth left the city to join ISIS in Syria, prompting a media storm and significant tensions among the city’s communities, and influencing the development of the UK’s Prevent Strategy; University of Portsmouth Policing Lecturer David Knowles, who was the officer responsible for the police response to the incidents and became the national lead for Prevent in education, looks back at the impact on the city and policing, and how those events have shaped Prevent over the past decade.
❝The lessons learned are as important now as they were then: radicalisation can be triggered by personal, local, national or global events and most importantly, terrorism prevention is a shared endeavour based on engagement, trust and partnership.❞
❝The concept of a return to normality is interesting because ‘normal’ is never the same again following a critical incident in which terrorism is involved; instead communities come to terms with a new normal.❞
❝One recommendation given the highest priority by police colleagues was the desire for a mandatory duty for statutory partners to work together to prevent extremism, similar to the existing duty to prevent crime and disorder afforded by the 1998 Act.❞
❝While the police in Portsmouth did engage with community leaders and had useful networks, it became clear to me that the austerity measures imposed on policing had diluted neighbourhood police teams to such an extent that engagement had become inadequate.❞
❝I discovered that police engagement in 2013 had become tokenistic and not properly embedded which is perhaps why police were unaware of the travel plans of the six.❞
❝With no requirement to perceive events overseas as part of their mandate, local authorities ignored the potential for harm that global conflict has. This repeated pattern of global events impacting on UK radicalisation should not be ignored.❞
❝Ultimately because of the Prevent Duty, Hampshire enjoyed a healthy spike in Prevent referrals. I say ‘healthy’ because referrals in this context are a measure of trust and confidence: a lack of referrals indicates low trust, whilst an appropriately high level of referrals should be perceived as indicative of good safeguarding and information sharing.❞
❝The majority of recent Channel referrals have been about extreme-right ideologies which reflects the contemporary global political situation; however, MI5 is clear that Islamism is the most significant threat, with these individuals providing greatest capability.❞
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