The New Prevent Strategy: Strengthening the Framework to Fight Home-Grown Extremism in the UK

Ewan King, Director, OPM

www.opm.co.uk

Our experience
West London Alliance CLG and GOL /LB Hammersmith and Fulham Communities and Local Government DCSF and CLG DCSF Homes and Communities Agency Evaluation of PVE pathfinder across 6 West London boroughs National guidance to assess score against four standards of NI35 Literature review on attitudes towards violent extremism amongst Muslim communities in the UK Support for the Young Muslim Advisory Group (YMAG) Research into teaching methods that help build resilience to violent extremism (October 2009) Social cohesion study Cohesion learning module for practitioners Embedding cohesion in procurement Literature review into the benefits of meaningful interaction Evaluation of Prevent projects Research into Best Practice on Prevent Projects and understanding the causes of violent extremism Evaluation of Prevent programme

CLG Woking Council London borough of Newham Welsh Assembly Government

Challenges facing public service organisations

Lack of clarity in understanding which groups are extreme

The debate on political Islam and what constitutes extremism is catastrophically muddled (Peter Oborne)
Disentangling cohesion from prevent (in many funded local authorities they are deeply aligned) Winning hearts and minds turning communities around on Prevent will take time Targeting who is at risk? Definitions have improved, but remain contested

Key steps for local partners Effective action planning Building robust and risk assured commissioning strategies Engaging and reassuring communities Rigorous approaches to evaluating impact

Effective action planning

Past challenges
Lack of confidence in agenda
Strategic leads, partners and project deliverers

Clash of cultures between police and local authorities Difficult to assess local risk profile
Lack of info sharing between local partners and security services

Importance
Clearly defined inputs, outputs and outcomes facilitates robust monitoring and evaluation Clear roles and responsibilities facilitates buy-in and commitment from all partners

Good practice
Manchester theory of change planning tool

Robust commissioning strategies

Past challenges Lack of clear commissioning criteria Delivering outcome based commissioning Lack of provider market (exacerbated in last 6 months) Importance Multi agency, outcome based commissioning will reduce risk, enhance value for money, and demonstrate outcomes Need to involve experts, VCS, and other organisations, e.g. HE, FE and prisons) Building high quality engagement and feedback Good practice Evidence based commissioning, e.g. community led peripatetic outreach work with young people, non-prescriptive education to challenge ideology (De Montfort University, 2010)

Engaging and reassuring communities

Past challenges

Lack of trust in the agenda amongst Muslim communities

Prevent strategy implies link between Islam and violent extremism Labels all Muslims potential terrorists

Unfair allocation of resources to Muslim communities

Importance

New messaging
Tiny part of community (2,500 out of 857,000 in Holland) All forms of extremism Protecting and keeping us all safe Wider issues to be managed through integration and cohesion Information safeguards

Community-led outreach to build trust

Good practice Newham - what else are we doing for communities Bristol police outreach work

Rigorous approaches to evaluating impact

Past challenges Relied on weak evidence base Evaluations were large formative and qualitative Lack of cost effectiveness analysis Lack of understanding of impact measures Importance Robust evaluation can determine impact, or at least distance-travelled Forms of cost effectiveness analysis are feasible Good practice West London evaluation Tower Hamlets

Identifying measures

Attitudes to grievances Understanding different sides to foreign policy arguments

Identity crisis/ confusion Access to theological guidance Knowledge to understand and challenge extremism Wellbeing and resilience (WARM)

External Social Individual

Civic participation Levels of integration, e.g. inter faith engagement Discrimination Hate crime Ref: EU, Radicalisation, Recruitment and the EU-counter radicalisation strategy Channel Referrals

Ewan King: eking@opm.co.uk

www.opm.co.uk

opmblog.co.uk