Efforts to identify extremists spurs profiling debate
LONDON — The boy’s teachers were growing increasingly concerned. He was speaking admiringly in school of Jihadi John, the notorious British executioner with the Islamic State, and expressing a desire to travel to Syria.
Twice, the teachers referred the boy — a teenager from Blackburn, in northern England — to a government program called Prevent, set up to spot early signs of extremism and intervene before it was too late.
On both occasions, the boy — struggling with his studies after his parents separated and socially withdrawn because of a degenerative eye disease that blurred his vision — refused to participate in sessions intended to keep him from becoming radicalized.
The need for such programs has become all the more apparent in the wake of the Paris attacks in November, which were carried out primarily by European citizens who became radicalized at home. Britain’s program is viewed as something of a model by other European countries and the United States.
But encouraging fellow citizens to identify potential radicals has also raised questions about racial and religious profiling and the balance between security and civil liberties, igniting a debate here over whether Prevent holds the risk of further alienating Muslims in Britain.
At the same time, the British program has exposed the limitations of an approach that relies on voluntary cooperation from those who are identified as potential threats. In the case of the boy in Blackburn, whose name has not been publicly disclosed because of his age, the police later arrested him after they found that he had made a detailed plan for an Islamic State- inspired massacre in Australia.
In October, he was sentenced for inciting terrorism overseas and became, at 15, the youngest person to get a life sentence in Britain in a terrorism case.
The Prevent program, started by Prime Minister Tony Blair in the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, London bombings, encourages and in some cases requires Britons to watch for signs of radicalization in their communities and to alert the authorities about people who could become risks, before they turn violent. Once someone is identified, the authorities judge whether the threat of radicalization is sufficient to justify further counseling; if so, the at- risk person is offered a place in a voluntary portion of the Prevent program known as Channel, which seeks to steer participants away from extremism.
Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government expanded the program’s scope, making it a legal duty for schools, hospitals, local governments, social services and prisons to flag extremist behavior with the authorities.
Opponents say that requirement risks turning Britain into a surveillance state where one section of the public is encouraged to snoop on everybody else.
In the case of the Blackburn schoolboy, his lawyer said he knew that what he had done was wrong, but the presiding judge said that the teenager had paid only “lip service” to attempts to reform him.
The boy is being put through a mandatory program in a youth detention center and may be released from custody in five years, but only if he is considered purged of Islamic State views.