ABSTRACT
This chapter serves to orientate the reader with the evolution of the Prevent Strategy and its associated Channel programme as set against the backdrop of Contest, the U.K. Government’s overarching counter terrorism strategy. It explores how the delivery of the Prevent Strategy has become mired in controversy due to its focus on Muslim communities and why the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government reviewed the strategy in 2011. Supported by interviews with senior civil servants, police officers and local authority representatives, it explains the “great divorce” whereby the government intended to separate community cohesion efforts from the Prevent Strategy and then maps how the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government interpreted their new policy areas post-2011.
