The banality of counterterrorism “after, after 9/11”? Perspectives on the Prevent duty from the UK health care sector

Abstract

Since 2015, the UK healthcare sector sector has (along with education and social care) been responsibilised for noticing signs of radicalisation and reporting patients to the Prevent programme. The Prevent Duty frames the integration of healthcare professionals into the UK's counterterrorism effort as the banal extension of safeguarding. But safeguarding has previously been framed as the protection of children, and adults with care and support needs, from abuse. This article explores the legitimacy of situating Prevent within safeguarding through interviews with safeguarding experts in six National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups. It also describes the factors which NHS staff identified as indicators of radicalisationdata which was obtained from an online questionnaire completed by 329 health care professionals. The article argues that the "after, after 9/11" era is not radically distinct from earlier periods of counterterrorism but does contain novel features, such as the performance of anticipatory counterterrorism under the rubric of welfare and care.

British terrorism preemption: Subjectivity and disjuncture in Channel “de‐radicalization” interventions

“…Under this rationality, “Anything can be a risk; it all depends on how one analyses the danger” (Ewald, 1991, p. 199). Critical researchers illuminate that as the trend away from probability‐based prevention and towards governing through possibility—or governing possibilities as likelihoods—takes place, security‐consciousness becomes banalized and enmeshed within the everyday (Amoore, 2013; Amoore & de Goede, 2008; Ewald, 1991; Heath‐Kelly & Strausz, 2018; Jackson, 2015; McCullough & Pickering, 2009). So despite the history of badger cull‐ and HS2‐related violence being markedly absent, these “ideologies” are deemed ripe for counter‐terrorism intervention.…”

Seeing and unseeing Prevent’s racialized borders

“…Structures and practices of surveillance are not only embedded within Muslim spaces such as mosques or youth organizations. The Prevent Duty has made radicalization prevention a statutory obligation across the public sector; Muslims encounter Prevent in schools (Walker, 2019), universities (Scott-Baumann, 2017), the National Health Service (NHS) (Heath-Kelly and Strausz, 2018), prisons (Hooper, 2017) and through social services (Qureshi, 2018). Younis and Jadhav (2019) note that while the Prevent Duty brings everyone who encounters public sector institutions under the purview of counter-radicalization surveillance through the collection of big data, the delivery and implementation of Prevent is still racially marked.…”

“…International Relations (IR) scholarship on Prevent has paid mixed attention to questions of ‘race’ and racialization, frequently engaging in whitewashing (Howell and Richter-Montpetit, 2019). While some contributions have tentatively explored the links between counter-radicalization practices and racialized Muslim populations (Martin, 2018; Ragazzi, 2017, 2015), in other work these concerns are under-theorized, leaving them either implicit (Heath-Kelly, 2013), marginal and/or absent (Heath-Kelly and Strausz, 2018; Heath-Kelly, 2016, 2012; Martin, 2014a, 2014b). Instead, this article engages with scholarship that centres processes of racialization (Kapoor, 2018; Qurashi, 2018; Patel, 2017; Sian, 2017; Cohen and Tufail, 2017; Sabir, 2017; Kundnani, 2014).…”

The psychologisation of counter-extremism: unpacking PREVENT

“…14 Concepts such as ‘exhibiting anger’ or ‘impact of mental health issues’, for example, are readily found in PREVENT’s counter-radicalisation criteria, whereby mental well-being is conceived as a panacea for national security. 15 PREVENT’s concurrent introduction of ‘fundamental British values’ in schools primarily address racialised Muslims, whose national and religious identities are perceived to be in perpetual state of integration and disintegration. 16…”