‘Material that incites extreme violence needs to be taken off the internet’, says former prisoner governor

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We spoke to former prison governor Ian Acheson. He’s now the Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project. We began by asking him why Prevent missed so many signs to stop Axel Rudakubana before he went on to kill.

Ian Acheson: We don’t have the full facts of a public inquiry and we will get those. But on the face of it, it does look like Prevent has failed to detect his descent into murderous violence. Prevent, I think, is overwhelmed by trivial referrals still, which is obscuring the risks posed by very dangerous people and distracting them from their core mission. Secondly, tendency of practitioners to see young people who are in trouble solely through the lens of vulnerability, not the risk they pose to others. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we’ve got no national agency that considers the threat posed by highly dangerous people, whatever their motivation is. Ideological, fixated, hatred, mental illness.

That was the hole in our defences as far as Rudakubana was concerned. We have a lot of other exceptionally dangerous young people in particular, who are not being properly served by psychological interventions or, and this is important, control measures that don’t look at them solely through the focus of vulnerability, but also look at the dangerousness they pose. We need a single executive agency, a national agency that looks at how to manage highly dangerous people.

Keme Nzerem: What about the role of inciting or potentially inciting violent material on the internet? Obviously, there have been calls for that to be removed. Is that practical? Do you think that should happen?

Ian Acheson: Material that incites extreme violence, which would be completely illegal in any other context, needs to be taken off the internet as soon as possible. It is part of the answer, but it is not the whole answer to why we seem to be having young people in particular, who become involved in indescribable and incomprehensible levels of extreme violence without much in the way of motivation going on. We need to tackle that. And that’s a societal problem which is much larger than dealing with awful videos on the internet.

Keme Nzerem: Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of the opposition, this morning again suggested that integration was part of the issue. I’m not sure if you saw her comments, but what do you make of that?

Ian Acheson: I did and I think Kemi Badenoch is asking the awkward questions that are on the lips of ordinary citizens who are horrified and outraged by what Rudakubana did. I think it’s quite reasonable to ask whether a lack of integration played a role in turning his hateful thought into action. That has to be heard by the public inquiry. It may not be a factor, but I’ll tell you this..

Keme Nzerem: Before you answer, she was unable to offer any evidence to support this idea that Axel or his parents were not integrated.

Ian Acheson: Right. I mean, we need a public inquiry to stand that up or refute it. But I do think a lack of integration and reintegration, particularly of terrorist offenders, but integration generally speaking, is not well-served in this country.

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