I cannot accept that the Prevent programme is of a piece with everyday psychiatric practice concerning safeguarding and confidentiality. Prevent is about spying and intelligence-gathering and this cannot be ducked.
Hurlow et al are wrong: historically there has been very little relationship between diagnosable mental illness and terroristic acts, which are almost always committed on political grounds. Indeed, most of the terroristic violence in the world is committed by states, not by private individuals. And although it is true that violent radicalised individuals may be from, say, the neo-Nazi right, no one imagines that Prevent was intended to capture anyone other than Muslims. Prevent is part of a wider effort, deeply self-serving, to objectify Muslim culture and religion as carrying explanations for terrorism, so obscuring what damage Western powers have wrought in the Middle East. Reference Kundnani1
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