Prevent - there are more children like Rudakubana

[noblegiraffe]

I just read this interesting and worrying article about the increase in children being referred to Prevent but not getting support from them due to lack of terrorist ideology.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/school-prevent-referrals-rise-but-fewer-get-support/

I can see that if Prevent resources are geared to children who are being groomed into jihadist ideology or white supremacy then they wouldn't necessarily be able to tackle someone who just wants to go on a killing spree. However it is clear that if violent tendencies and posing an obvious risk do not meet the threshold for Prevent support, then we either need a different agency to deal with these troubled children, or Prevent needs to widen its remit.

If Rudakubana phoned Childline aged around 12 to say he wanted to kill people, if social services were involved, if CAMHS was involved, if there were enough concerns that he was repeatedly referred to Prevent, then clearly there was need for a type of support that wasn't on offer.

The article says "In the year to April 2024, two in five school referrals were found to involve a vulnerable child, but one deemed not to be driven by a terrorist ideology.
That meant more than 1,000 cases from schools were classed as “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT [counter-terrorism] risk” – an increase of 140 per cent since before Covid."

"Just 8 per cent of all school referrals in the year to April 2024 resulted in a decision to give the child specialised support through Prevent"

Then what on earth is happening with the other 92%?

Jesus Christ. This thread is fucking depressing. Can we not just turn the internet off now?

How many preventable murders are acceptable collateral damage?

I know. Locking people up for crimes they could potentially commit. Something like that would threaten us all. How easily we give up our human rights when we feel scared.

The problem in these debates though, is that the bar is often at the far end, so in this case murder. Cant get worse than taking someones life

But lots of people who pose risk to others and have anti social behaviours and traits, make life intolerable for their neighbours, their peers, their relationships, their families, constant police intervention, assaults, harm, threats, criminal damage

So arent we talking about the impact of harm on a huge swathe of people too? Not just potential murder victims.

There are more children boys like Axel Rudukubana

Fixed that for you.

Nothing will be done. We need to acknowledge the overwhelmingly sexed nature of crime and violent crime - Starmer actually referred to young men in their bedrooms now I think about it, so there may be some hope. But nothing will be done because it is a problem with the dominant half of the human species. It won’t be done because they are dominant, in fact their dominance and ego is a huge part of the problem. In fairness there is the practical problem that has been alluded to on other threads occasionally, the simple practical one of numbers.

There is, on average, about 1 child homicide per week in the UK. The vast majority are killed by their parent or step-parent.

Would that justify incarceration of all parents or step parents? Or is it ‘acceptable collateral damage’ (to use your phrase) for the right to become a parent or marry a parent?

Around 65 children under 16 were killed in road collisions.

Would that justify incarceration or banning all drivers? Or is it ‘acceptable collateral damage’ for the right to choose to travel by motorised transport?

There is no zero risk option. In all areas of life, we balance risks and rewards, freedoms and costs.

Valdo Calocane told his psychiatrist he would kill and he did 3 times

@AngryLikeHades 'that prick' attended a residential SEN school for children with profound autism in Broadstairs Kent.

He is a complex case.

@mollyfolk in this case he had engaged with knives and caused harm... He was deranged and dangerous.
If we are saying there was nowhere to report him too or do about him then we are all very much at risk arnt we.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-53191161 Jonty bravery will be out in 10 yrs. Doesn't bear thinking about

Just reminding myself about this case. There was a view that the risk from him had lowered around the time of the attack

Also not sure what the note means on the article that they had amended parts of the article in line with reporting guidelines around autism?

I also know, as detailed in the article, that quite often comments made like he did about killing people is often seen by CAMHS as attention seeking or saying things for effect or the outburst or communication style linked to ASD rather than having any intent behind it. Lots and lots of children are seen in this way.

Which of them are serious about it?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/27/jonty-bravery-tate-modern-not-considered-risk

@mollyfolk agree but this man's profile is different he was obsessed with violence and one of the most horrific genocide of recent times which happened largely by machete.
He himself was obsessed by knives and took them out he was violent to fellow students he took a hockey stick into his old school in a carful thought out pre mediated attack and smashed someone's wrist.
He had a knife on a bus his parents had apparently called the police on him.
I suppose at some point they thought no one is helping us what more can we do

I'm specifically referring to the fact that they couldn't have locked him up for life for what he had done.

Yes absolutely he had lots of red flags and slipped through the net for sure. What service fitted him - none really not prevent because he wasn't a terrorist not Camhs because he failed to engage. I suppose that's what we are discussing.

Sectioning surely because he had shown his hand.

You do keep repeating the attack with the hockey stick and the knife on the bus incident as if they are extreme and very abnormal behaviour

Others and I have told you about many children who do these things, who carry knives, who make threats, who turn up to school and attack others after ruminating on it or announcing the intent. Its not all day every day for all children, but is not rare either

This in itself would not have marked him out as particularly high risk.

His other markers, the intense obsessions, isolation, repeated attempts as he got older, yes.

But attacks at school and knife carrying very unfortunately is happening with lots of kids.

There are a small number of people who pose a very credible threat to public safety. They aren’t 1% of the population, they aren’t even 0.01%. But they exist and they commit crimes such as this.

Would any of you who consider preemptive incarceration to be inhumane be prepared to address the parents of the murdered girls and explain that it wouldn’t have been fair to lock up AR as a preventative measure even though there was a documented history of very concerning behaviour, and if he had been incarcerated at 13 it would mean those children would still be alive?

The Prevent programme targets individuals at risk of radicalisation before they commit an offence. The clue is in the name - Prevent. Yes, it is ‘voluntary’ and up to the individual if they wish to engage or not, but in reality if they don’t they’ll probably be flagged for some form of surveillance.

If using measures to stop a potential act of extreme violence is unacceptable then does this extent to Prevent?

AR, in the years since he was 13, is known to have:

• obsessed over historic genicides
• found by police carrying a knife on a bus (possession of a blade over 3” in a public place without good reason is an imprisonable offence) but taken home without charge
• informed Childline he wanted to murder someone
• referred to the police and CAMHS as a danger
• expelled from school for violence and bringing a knife onto school premises
• attacked a former classmate with a hockey stick
• banned from attending a PRU (Acorns) due to the danger he posed
• planned to commit mass murder at a school
• ordered weapons online including knives and arrows
• downloaded terrorist manuals
• researched, planned and succeeded in manufacturing ricin
• it was necessary for mental health professionals to be accompanied by the police when visiting AR as they didn’t feel safe
• murdered three girls and injured many others

Are we really expected to maintain that only the last point is worthy of deprivation of liberty? That the others are simply to be accepted as the costs of modern society?

Because frankly society is fortunate that he only managed to murder three children before he was stopped. He had the means to kill many more.

Not every child who expresses an unhealthy interest in extreme violence needs to be locked up indefinitely for the safety of the rest of us, but some - a very small number - most certainly do.

By declaring that locking up anyone who has yet to murder or maim despite expressing a clear intention to do so, society implicitly states there is a defined level of acceptable homicide before action will be taken.

I fundamentally disagree with that position.

@TaffetaRustle

Yes he was violent and deranged. But there must have been an earlier point where it was possible to engage with him. This is the end result of a failure much earlier down the line.

He was engaged earlier down the line, he was open to CAMHS from 2019 by all accounts?

why is it complex, or more complex than Axel Rudakubana?

The article refers to an inquiry which O think sounds pretty similar to what’s being discussed? It suggests there is an unmet need within the existing system.

“It makes seven findings, including a lack of residential treatment options for young people with high-risk behaviours, emerging personality disorder and coexisting autism, and disincentives for support staff to escalate service gaps, creating an unmet need on behalf of the service user.”

Agree with all of this, but, who makes the decision and when

Because that long list, is year on year on year of him since around aged 12 or 13.

Thats 4 or 5 years until the event that most people consider 'the' incident

So at what point is the action taken to keep him away from society and for how long?

I think thats the problem

Government statistics show there is on average one rape a day in schools.

Do you think that is something that should be of concern, or, because it is so frequent, is it something we should just accept as part and parcel of contemporary school life?

@Rewindpresse I didn't say that and I don't disagree with you.

I posted for years under another name as my eldest was In one of the very few forensic psychiatric units in the Uk for children. Not having committed a crime but threatening too. He spent over two years there. And time between other units.

So I have the experience as a parent. And the mum of a service user.

I thought the serious case review found that also professionals were appropriately working with each other and him. Obstructed by lack of services that fit the bill for him

I got the impression with Bravery he had profound autism. But really the only difference between them is that he was in care in a placement that couldnt really contain him (and wasnt able to at the time as his risk was seen as improved) and Axel was not in care.

This is an interesting document

https://www.lse.ac.uk/law/Assets/Documents/jill-peay/anticipating-harm.pdf

The word 'sectioning', i.e. under section whatever of the relevant law, is a health thing, not a criminal thing. It is used for people with known or suspected mental illness.
If a person has already been assessed and is known not to have a mental illness, then sectioning doesn't apply.
The only other option is detention under some criminal law.

That is the gap in policy and law that has become apparent - how can you lock up someone who has no mental illness and has not, yet, committed a crime?

I think an opportunity was missed when he went to carry out an attack on his former school but was apparently talked out of it by his father.

One wonders whether he had been talked out of other things previously.

But if the police just bought him home when he was found on a bus saying he wanted to attack people, what exactly would the police have done if the father had called regarding the aborted school attack?