Prevent and Extremism

• Prevent: Prevent is part of the UK government's counter-terrorism strategy. It focuses on safeguarding and supporting individuals who are vulnerable to radicalisation and extremism. 

• Extremism: Extremism is a term which means the holding of extreme political, social, or religious views.

• Radicalisation: When someone is radicalised, it means that they have gone through the process of adopting radical positions on political, social, or religious issues. 

• Terrorism: Terrorism can be defined as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.

• Counter-terrorism, or anti-terrorism: These are the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategy that governments, military, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism.

• Ideology: Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. 

In the UK, we follow the British Values in order to keep ourselves, the people around us, and our overall society safe. You can find out more about this by heading over to our British Values page. 

If you are worried about extremism or radicalisation, you must tell someone. 

Who to contact in college
Students can speak to any staff member (Tutor, teacher, LSA, Course Leader, DSO, Stay Safe Officer) in college or use report it button.

Who to contact outside of college

• IN AN EMERGENCY, call 999 and ask for the police

• Metropolitan Police
  Anyone can tell the police about possible terrorist activity. Reporting possible terrorist or extremist activity helps them to prevent terrorism and save lives. Any piece of information could be important. Even if you’re not sure, please let the Metropolitan Police know so they can investigate.
  Action will only be taken after the appropriate checks have been carried out. The Met hosts this reporting service on behalf of all UK police forces: https://www.met.police.uk/tua/tell-us-about/ath/possible-terrorist-activity 

• ACT  - Action Counters Terrorism
  If you’ve seen or heard something that could potentially be related to terrorism, trust your instincts and report it. Your actions could save lives. Visit: https://act.campaign.gov.uk/
  You can watch this video to find out more: https://youtu.be/N8DPPQUem9A 

How do we define terrorism and extremism in the UK?

• To find out more about what we mean by the term 'extremism', watch this short video: https://youtu.be/n3XDN6TAHoM   

• Visit the Educate Against Hate site to find out how we define terrorism and extremism in the UK: https://educateagainsthate.com/what-is-extremism/    

What's it like to grow up within an extremist group?

• You can watch this video from an ex-member of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church to find out more about how growing up in an extremist group can damage your views of the world: https://youtu.be/bVV2Zk88beY

It is extremely unlikely that you will ever experience a terrorist attack.

However, if you do, the government have a strategy called Run, Hide, Tell to help you stay safe and get help in the event of an attack.

You can watch a video about this here: https://youtu.be/WDiv-PwEde4