Description
The British government’s counter-terrorism policy Prevent Duty puts a legal obligation on employees of specified public authorities to monitor people for signs of radicalisation and to keep them from being drawn into terrorism. The policy has been a point of contention within public discourse with policymakers, academics, and practitioners championing or critiquing the policy. However, beyond the realm of public discourse, there seems to be a grudging consent for Prevent policing amongst the people who have to implement it. This paper aims to explore how this consent is manufactured and what does this tell us about the changing nature of counter-terrorism policing in civic life.
Using Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, this paper will demonstrate that the Prevent Duty is being transformed from a coercive juridical instrument into a ‘common sense’ approach by the co-optation of practices such as safeguarding within health, education, and social work sectors. This enquiry is informed by the findings of semi-structured interviews conducted with Prevent co-ordinators and employees of specified authorities in the north of England. These interviews provide insights into how counter-terrorism monitoring is normalised within civic spaces and the nature of consent for this policing, ranging from wholehearted approval to reluctant adoption of Prevent by social workers and health and education practitioners.
Gramsci’s framework of hegemony is useful for this study because it not only explains how the Prevent Duty is neutralised from a policing tool into an act of civic duty, it also helps us chart a course for this hegemonic regime which is moving beyond specific sectors in the society to encompass entire communities of counter-terrorism citizens conducting surveillance as ‘common sense’ practice.
