ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changing conceptions of prevention' within UK counterterrorism. It examines the pre-configuration of pre-emptive politics in attempts to suppress Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) militancy. The chapter considers the developments within UK counterterrorism strategy between the prevention of Terrorism Acts (PTAs) and the recent reworking of contest. It also explains policy appears to swerve towards pre-emption, practices of pre-emptive counterterrorism like the production of suspect communities' have continued across both eras. Scholars in criminology and sociology have produced evidence that the practice of counterterrorism has produced both Irish and Muslim suspect communities' in the last 40 years. The chapter focuses on the use of counterterrorist violence to conceal gaps' in the knowledge produced about terrorism, violence which conceals indeterminacy about the point where suspect subjectivities become dangerous subjectivities. It focuses on these articulations of risky communities, highlighting how they lead to false positives' in the identification of terrorists and the use of sovereign force.
