the times | Tuesday May 17 2022 2GM 15
News
OLIVER TAYLOR/DERBY MUSEUMS AND ART GALLERY/PASpecial constables will be given the
power to use Tasers as part of Boris
Johnson’s plans to put law and order at
the heart of his levelling-up agenda.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, will
use her speech at today’s Police Federa-
tion conference in Manchester to
announce that she has given approval
to the group of almost 9,000 volunteer
police officers in England and Wales to
carry the weapon if their chief officer
authorises it. It will add to the 142,
police officers in England and Wales
who are allowed to use a Taser.
The Home Office said that the move
was to ensure that special constables
were not at a disadvantage when facing
an attacker wielding a knife, or a
marauding terrorist. A spokesman said
they faced the same dangers and re-
sponded to the same sort of crimes as
other police officers but were barred
from carrying a Taser.
The department pointed to statistics
that suggest Tasers act as an effective
deterrent and are rarely used. They are
discharged in only one in ten cases
when they are drawn, according to the
Special constables to carry
Tasers in new Tory agenda
Home Office. However, a report last
year by the Independent Office for
Police Conduct warned that officers
were missing opportunities to de-
escalate situations before firing the
stun guns and were using them for
prolonged periods in nearly a third of
cases. It also warned that officers had
deployed Tasers unsafely and dispro-
portionately against black people.
Today’s cabinet meeting will focus on
the law and order measures the govern-
ment is announcing this week, includ-
ing lifting restrictions on police use of
stop-and-search powers, and a national
drug conference on Thursday.
Johnson said tackling crime was
central to his pledge to “level up” left-
behind communities. However, the
government’s record on crime has been
called into question after a joint report
by the inspectors of the constabulary,
prosecutors, prisons and probation
services said the criminal justice system
was operating at “unacceptable levels”
and failing to recover after the
pandemic.
It found that police forces had logged
a record high of nearly 171,000 rape and
other sexual offence allegations last
year in England and Wales.Matt Dathan
Jonathan Ames Legal Editor
The government is guilty of “double
standards” over its counterterrorism
strategy by targeting too many right-
wing extremists at the expense of
Islamism, leaked drafts from a review of
the Prevent programme have revealed.
The review, carried out by William
Shawcross, also found that some Islam-
ist groups had received taxpayer fund-
ing despite promoting extremist views,
including support for the Taliban. He is
expected to recommend that the
government cut funding from all such
groups.
According to draft extracts seen by
The Guardian, Shawcross states: “As a
core principle, the government must
cease to engage with or fund those
aligned with extremism.”
He is expected to recommend a
renewed focus on Islamist extremism
even when individuals do not yet meet
the terrorism threshold.
The extracts say there has been a
“double standard” approach. Individ-
uals have been referred to Prevent for
expressing mainstream right-wing
views because the definition of neo-
Nazism has been extended too widely,
the leaks said. In contrast, the defini-
tion of Islamist extremism has
narrowed, leading to fewer referrals.
The findings are expected to raise
further questions over Prevent, which
is a key strand of the government’s
counterterrorism strategy. Sir Peter
Fahy, the former police lead for the
deradicalisation scheme, accused
Shawcross of attempting to “politicise
counterterrorism policing”, telling the
newspaper it was “quite dangerous to
play off one ideology against another”.
The conclusions will inform an over-
haul of the programme promised by
Priti Patel, the home secretary. Last
month she said her time in office had
shown her “there are definitely things
Out of the shadows Joseph Wright’s Self-Portrait at the Age of About Forty goes on display at Derby Museums today after
250 years of private ownership. It is one of ten pieces in which the master of candlelit paintings depicts himself as an artistAnti-terror tactics
are criticised over
Islamism response
that we need to change”. She is said to
have received the review at the end of
last month.
There was frustration among Home
Office officials at the time the review
had taken, which suggests Patel will
publish her response soon.
The review also found that individ-
uals had been referred to Prevent to
access mental health support even
when there was no evidence of
extremism.
Islamist extremists accounted for 22
per cent of Prevent referrals last year.
For the first time they were overtaken
by far-right extremists, who made up
25 per cent of referrals. More than half
— 51 per cent — related to individualswith a “mixed, unstable or unclear
ideology”, which included individuals
categorised as “incels”, meaning invol-
untarily celibate.
However, the head of MI5 has classi-
fied Islamist terrorism as still posing the
greatest threat to security, with Isla-
mists making up about nine in ten
people on its watchlist and two thirds of
the 229 terrorists in custody last year.
Shawcross’s findings echo recom-
mendations by David Cameron, the
former prime minister, who accused
Muslim groups that criticised Prevent
of “enabling terrorism”.
In an article in The Times last month,
he said the government had failed to
counter anti-Prevent narratives that
claim the programme is Islamophobic.
and those who refused to challenge
“falsehoods” about Prevent were
“guilty of a form of passive tolerance”.Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor
William Shawcross
found far-right
extremists were
prioritised