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Prevent has drifted into a catch-all for unmet safeguarding demand. To protect national security, we need precision in counterterrorism and scale in prevention, via a single, locally led front door that routes violence-related concerns to the right support, with Prevent reserved for genuine terrorism risk.

The terrorism landscape the UK faced a decade ago, characterised by organised departures to join Daesh and relatively structured plots attributed to clearly defined terror groups, has shifted. What dominates now are acts of violence committed by individuals or small clusters of peers, driven less by clear and coherent ideologies than by personal grievances and vulnerabilities, often exacerbated online. The latest Prevent referral data confirm this point. The system, which was designed for the post-9/11 and 7/7 era, is no longer fit to meet the mix of threats we see today. The Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism reaches a similar conclusion in their report, published this month, arguing for an integrated model that strengthens overall security.

Shifting Threat Profile

Fundamentally, RUSI’s Terrorism and Conflict team evidences the same findings, with the risk factors that drive ideologically motivated individual violence often substantially overlapping with those behind other forms of serious harm. Exceptionalising terrorism from the wider violence ecosystem makes sense for coordinated groups that often operate across borders. But lone actors and small groups of peers whose structure bears little resemblance to formal violent extremist organisations, are often more similar to the perpetrators of non-ideological violence (or violence motivated by ideologies that are not currently included in the UK’s definition of terrorism, such as misogyny) than they are, for example, to an al-Qaeda cell.

Why the shift? Several reinforcing drivers shape risk across all age groups, though they are often most visible among younger people: declining offline social interaction and rising loneliness; pandemic-era disruption; economic pressures that delay adult milestones; and, for many boys and young men, turbulence around status and identity. School-age gender gaps in attainment can feed grievance narratives well before workplace discrimination against women becomes visible to young men, creating a vacuum that misogynistic worldviews readily fill. In addition, the information environment with its instant access to conflict (Gaza, Ukraine, etc.) plus AI-generated false and deceptive content create a perfect environment for grievance, doomscrolling, conspiratorial ‘sense-making’ and polarisation to take place.

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