Boys under 15 are ‘most at risk of radicalisation and turning to terrorism’

Schoolchildren aged under 15 accounted for the highest proportion of people deemed by the Government’s Prevent counter-terrorism programme to be most at risk of radicalisation, figures have revealed.

Under-15s, predominantly boys, formed the largest of any age group to be referred on by Prevent to so-called Channel programmes, designed for those judged to be most at risk of radicalisation and turning to terrorism.

They contributed to a 30 per rise - to 6,406 - in the number of people referred to Prevent in the year to March 2022. Experts suggested the rise was fuelled by the Covid lockdowns, when more children could have been exposed to extremism as they went online whilst away from school and potentially isolated from friends.

The Home Office figures showed under-15s made up 1,829 - or 29 per cent - of the referrals to Prevent, with 299 adopted by Channel officials. That accounted for 37 per cent of all such cases and ahead of the previous top group of 15 to 20-year-olds.

Education provided the highest number of referrals to the Prevent programme for the first time, at 2,305 or 36 per cent - overtaking police, who referred 1,808, or 28 per cent.

Review expected to criticise Prevent

The figures, published on Thursday, come as the Government prepares to publish its long-awaited review of Prevent by historian and author William Shawcross, the former chairman of the Charity Commission.

It is expected to criticise Prevent for straying from its “core mission” of stopping people from becoming terrorists by putting too much emphasis on treating them as victims.

It is also expected to say that Prevent is “out of kilter” with the rest of the counter-terrorism system by focusing on Right-wing extremism at the expense of the Islamist threat, which accounts for the vast majority of terror attacks.

The vast majority - 89 per cent, or 5,725 - were male, rising to 92 per cent of those referred on to Channel. Extreme Right-wing radicalisation accounted for 1,309, or 20 per cent, and Islamist ideology for 16 per cent, or 1,027.

Two per cent - 154 - of referrals were due to concerns regarding school massacres, and one per cent - 77 - of concerns were incel-related, an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually and turn to hostility.

Lockdowns could have fuelled extremism

Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who led an independent review of Islamist extremism in jails, said the increase could be explained by children being kept away from school and friends by lockdowns.

“It is probably no surprise that they have been looking at things that are inappropriate, raising suspicions in those close to them that they are being drawn into extremism,” he said.

There was also evidence suggesting some of those referring people to Prevent were unclear about the requirements of the programme. The data suggested the largest number of referrals at a third of the total, 2,127, related to people “with a vulnerability present but no ideology or counter-terrorism risk”.

It came as new figures suggested there had been a ten-fold increase in self-generated sex abuse images involving primary children since the UK went into lockdown during the pandemic.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reported a 1,058 per cent increase in the number of webpages showing images and videos of children aged 7 to 10 who have been recorded sexually abusing themselves on camera, often by a predator who had contacted them online.

The IWF had 63,050 reports of self generated abuse images, up 129 per cent on the 27,550 in 2021. The charity said paedophiles had exploited the pandemic which saw thousands of children relying on the internet to learn, socialise, and play.

Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF, said: “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We have all adjusted our lives to be more online than ever before, and that is not going to change.

“During the pandemic, the internet was a lifeline. But we are only now unpacking the full effects. What is clear to us is that younger children are being pulled into abusive situations by rapacious predators, often while they are in their own bedrooms.

“Their parents are often unaware there is this online backdoor into their homes which is leaving their children vulnerable. I fear this could be the tip of the iceberg.”