Description
This paper critically analyses the short government-sponsored film Conviction – produced to spread awareness about Prevent – and interviews with Prevent officials, to highlight the significant disjunctures in contemporary terrorism preemption. It highlights, within a risk-society-informed discourse analysis, a state of being where non-criminal subjectivities are infused with assumptions of risk. The film, attempting to show the sorts of behaviours that should be associated with risk (isolation, abuse, lack of role models), portrays a young Muslim schoolboy upset by classmates and by encounters on the street, seeking solace and meaning. It ultimately posits that society should ‘keep an eye out’ for banal behaviours like strong reactions to bullying and the buying of chemicals, just in case they result in acts of terrorism. The paper primarily explores the functioning of banality and temporality in the assumptions made by the direction and implementation of Prevent. It suggests that as pre-crime and post-crime are drawn together, the borders of safe and unsafe are redrawn, the space within which the state intervenes to minimize risk expanding to encompass more racialized and gendered assumptions. And as the past becomes disassociated with the future, the rule of law to protect and maintain rights can ultimately have no response.
