Disrupting terrorist activity

The UK’s CONTEST strategy ¹ for countering the threat of terrorism emphasises that prosecution is the UK’s preferred method of disrupting terrorist activity. ² Whilst this prioritisation of prosecution has several benefits – including the fact that imprisonment is more protective of national security than other non-criminal methods of disruption and the level of censure communicated by conviction for a criminal offence – it should, we suggest, be understood as being rooted primarily in the procedural protections and safeguards of the criminal law. ³ Suspects charged with a criminal offence are tried in open court, they have the opportunity to see and respond to the evidence against them, and the burden of proof rests on the prosecution, who must prove their allegations beyond reasonable doubt. These features give the criminal sanction a unique moral authority and legitimacy that other methods of disruption lack.