Preventing Violent Extremism

The UK faces a severe and continuing threat from international terrorism and extreme violence. As part of the measures to keep people safe, the Government introduced a counter-terrorism strategy known as CONTEST. Delivery of this strategy is organised around four workstreams:

• Pursue - to stop terrorist attacks.
• Prevent - to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremists.
• Protect - to strengthen our protection against terrorism attacks.
• Prepare - where we cannot stop an attack, mitigate its impact.

To reduce the risk from terrorism and extreme violence, we need to not only stop attacks but also safeguard and stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism. As a result of this thinking the Government introduced it’s PREVENT strategy.

PREVENT has five main strands:

• To challenge the ideology behind violent extremism and support mainstream voices;
• Disrupt those who promote violent extremism and support the places where they operate;
• Support individuals who are vulnerable to recruitment, or have already been recruited by violent extremism;
• Increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism;
• To address the grievances which ideologues are exploiting.

And two cross-cutting themes:

• Develop prevent related intelligence, analysis and research;
• Improve strategic communication.

The Government’s Prevent Strategy reflects the recognition that a centrally-driven approach to counter-terrorism will not be effective on its own and there needs to be work in partnership with local authorities. Local communities working in partnership with their local authority, Police, education institutions and others are at the heart of stopping people becoming or supporting violent extremists.