Referrals to anti-terror scheme reach record high

0:00Thanks for downloading the World Tonight podcast for Thursday 6 August. I'm Jane Hill. New startling figures have emerged about the number of children being referred to the government's anti-extremism prevent scheme. We'll discuss what's driving the problem and how it might be tackled. Controversy at the Edinburgh Festival. The sister of Meredith Kircher, murdered in Italy nearly 20 years ago, has criticised the show being performed by Amanda Knox. We'll hear more about that. And in a country where women's freedom has been so curtailed, tailed, we hear from exiled members of Afghanistan's women's football team about how they're back on the international stage playing together.

0:41We learned some startling figures today then in relation to the government's counter-extremism programme Prevent. The number of referrals has hit the highest since the scheme began a decade ago. The latest Home Office data showing that concerns were raised about nearly 10 ,000 people in England and Wales in the 12 months to September last year. That's an increase of 37%. And digging into those stats, what was really striking was that the biggest group of referrals was children, the largest proportion of them aged just 11 to 15 years old. Minors are flagged by schools, healthcare staff or local authorities who may have concerns about youngsters' susceptibility to radicalisation.

1:26But it's not always about ideology, like far-right or Islamist extremism. More than half of all referrals were of people with no identified ideology. Their fascination is with worryingly violent content. Tim Jakes is the government's independent prevent commissioner. In response to today's figures, he said the system wasn't set up for the problem it's currently dealing with. He told The World at One that the digital world has played a big part in this increase. The role of the online world and online influence and how people with some grievance, some sense of fascination in violence can find communities that will echo those beliefs and develop those beliefs is a phenomenon, again, which is relatively new.

2:15And we are increasingly seeing those draws. And again, to young people, but not just young people, people with other vulnerabilities or fascinations. So the online world is a massive factor in what we see in these referral statistics. Tim Jakes. So how do we tackle children's fascination in particular with online violence, if not by using the PREVENT scheme? Let's ask Adam Hadley. He's the founder and executive director of Tech Against Terrorism. And Ruby Farr joins us as well from the Child Online Harms Policy Think Tank at the University of East London. A very good evening to both of you. It's a huge topic.

2:57Adam, can I come to you first? I mean, what do you make of these figures today? Unfortunately, the figures aren't surprising at all. What we've found over the past couple of years in particular is a huge increase in the amount of violent, terrorist and extremist content online. What we know is that in the majority of cases, prevent cases and successful prosecutions, if it goes that far, The internet plays a central role in radicalisation. Not only that, it's happening much faster. And unfortunately, there isn't a lot of data on this because the tech platforms, social media and so on, make it really quite hard to understand what's going on on their platforms.

3:35OK, we'll talk about some of that. Ruby, first of all, what do you make of the figures as well? Your perspective. Well, I think it's shocking, but it's also probably slightly expected. And I think we know that teenagers test boundaries and there's an introduction of cyberspace and online forums and social media platforms with lots of graphic content and the dark web. And our research that we published Pathways into and out of cybercrime earlier this year really highlights the role that curiosity plays with young boys when they're engaging with a range of potentially harmful things online and how easily that can escalate.

4:15and we interviewed convicted cyber criminals about their lived experiences and pathways and escalations into risky and serious illegal behaviors and rhetorics online and a quote that I think resonates really well was it was a series of clicks that was all and I think that that's really important to highlight here is that teenagers are naturally curious and they test boundaries and I'm sure we can all remember that but without thinking about perhaps the potential ramifications or the real world consequences of what they are seeing and sharing and engaging in. And I think, as has just been said, that's massively amplified by how anonymous people can feel in cyberspace.

4:57So the online world has played a big part in that, I would agree. Right. So we've got curiosity and we've got the fact that it can all build very, very quickly. So, Adam, first off, I mean, where is the responsibility here? I mean, what about the platforms that are hosting violent content? Do we start with them? How does that get tackled? Well, we have to start with them because in many cases, they're making a huge amount of money as a result of advertising. The Online Safety Act, which obviously is now in place, is pretty good in some ways. But what it doesn't do is seek to understand the amount of content available.

5:33And there is a huge amount of material easily available on major social media platforms. and almost nothing is being done about it, unfortunately. So it's really shocking what's happening. We know that the number of referrals into Prevent is increasing kind of month on month. We know that Prevent are really overloaded, but they can't really keep the tide of hate back because so many of these platforms are doing so little. And in fact, we know most of the platforms, there are huge job cuts, replacing policy teams and content moderators with AI. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but what that means is these platforms often don't really understand what content is being shared.

6:17They're not able to intervene at the scale required. And as a result, vulnerable young people are being drawn into extremism and violence like no time before. So there is a real problem here, and there's no immediate answer, I think, other than trying to hold platforms to account more effectively than is being done at present. Ruby, I mean, do you echo that? Do you have other suggestions? I think algorithmic pathways are funneling especially young boys into escalating extremist content. And we're seeing that across various research studies. And also you've got targeted platforms and influences as well.

7:02And as has been said, if that's not being checked checked and it's not being looked at what's going to these young boys. It's, yeah. And if I may say as well, yeah, it is that the police often don't have the resources to look at the internet in the way that people would expect. There are various laws in place to protect privacy, which are very important. But actually it's really difficult for the police and for social services and others to understand what's happening online. One of the things we're calling for at Tech Against Terrorism is much better researcher and academic access to these platforms because after Cambridge Analytica, many of these platforms cut off all of these researcher access programs.

7:45So as a result, it's really hard to know what's going on. And it's therefore difficult to understand what the pathways to radicalization are. And it's hard to scrutinize the platforms as a result. Ruby, briefly, regulation, governments, where does this lie? Because the internet is global. Yeah, exactly. It's boundaryless, isn't it? And it's extremely, extremely difficult. I think from our point of view at the think tank, we talk a lot about the serious, crucial need now for a whole society approach. And that includes parents, teachers, and also really the importance of equipping young people to feel safe and empowered online.

8:30And I think one of the big things is, is that we know that a lot of these things are underreported. So you've got young people who are exposed to a magnitude of violence in cyberspace, and that's across platforms, all sorts of platforms. And that might be in the form of toxic masculinity or extremist views, explicit or harmful pornography or other graphic videos that all kind of amalgamate and tie into each other. But it leads to this normalisation of violent and harmful rhetorics and it isn't being reported. We must. Research has shown. I'm so sorry to cut you off. You both have so much expertise.

9:08I'm so, so grateful that you could join us. We will be discussing this again for sure. That's as much as I can say. Thank you so much, Ruby Farr, Adam Hadley. Very good that you could join us. Thank you very much. Let's turn to what is going on certainly for lots and lots of people in the north of England thousands of rail passengers tonight describing nightmare journeys over the last few hours services hit by delays and cancellations it all is the result of a power failure at a Manchester signalling centre that caused major disruption across northern England It's been an absolute nightmare to be honest every time I come up to Manchester from Bristol, trains are cancelled.

9:50It happens literally every time. So I was hopping on a stoke on a train and it was pretty tricky. The train kept getting delayed and delayed, delayed further and further and further. It was an hour and 16 minutes later than it should be. On the app, they've not said anything and it just says, delayed, delayed, delayed, but then last minute it'll say, cancel, cancel, cancel. So you're constantly like, is it going to be there or not? We've been waiting two hours. It's really frustrating. Well, let's get the latest from our correspondent, Judith Moritz, because she is in Manchester. It's been a horrendous day for so many people, Judith.

10:23Bring us right up to date.

10:27Yeah, Jane, it has. And do you know what's incredible? This whole chaos, this mess started because of a 90 second power outage. So just before two o 'clock this afternoon, a substation on the east of Manchester knocked out the power for just a minute and a half. But what happened was that that was a substation that fed one of the train operating centres near to where I am here at Piccadilly Station in Manchester. That was enough to trip off the power and cause signalling failures. And to compound matters, the backup system that should have kicked in didn't, or at least not in the way it should have done, not as quickly as it should have done.

11:10And so the knock-on of that 90 seconds of power cut is still being felt now. I'm on the concourse at Piccadilly. It's pretty quiet at the moment, but I suppose it would be anyway at this time of night. We've been seeing passengers getting on and off trains this evening, so it is starting to get back up and running. But the system as a whole across the north of England is far from back to normal. they're telling us that in fact the rest of tonight's timetable will be one in which disruptions, cancellations and delays continue and then into tomorrow morning as well. And that's partly, by the way, because even where services are running, the rolling stock, the trains and the staff are out of place.

11:52And as I speak to you now, there are engineers still working hard to try to fix the problem that started all of this and work out exactly what caused it. Yes, I mean, it's got to be one heck of an investigation, surely. The notion that this level of chaos can be caused by such a brief, brief power cut. Yeah, it shows you how finely balanced the whole system is. In total, eight rail companies were affected, certainly across the north. I was looking at the map when this first started early afternoon, and it was beginning to affect parts of the Midlands as well. and even if you were, say, in London trying to get a train up to Manchester, the odds were that you were going to have a problem.

12:36Now, it seemed that parts of the network got online more quickly than others and we've spoken to passengers who were en route when the problem started and they were able to continue their journeys but with delays. But there were plenty of other people who turned up to the station, you heard a little flavour of it there at the beginning, and just found the departure boards reading cancellation, cancellation, cancellation. And stories of people getting taxis for£90, you know, or having to find other ways of travelling long distances, losing out on work, all that sort of thing. You know, every story, every train that's stopped, delayed or cancelled, every number of people who are affected, there's then a story behind that of that disruption.

13:19And that's what we've been hearing loudly today, just frustration from people that this happened. Absolutely. And what we're told now is those engineers are making headway. They're getting there, but there's still a lot of work to do. All right, Judith. Thanks so much, Judith Moritz at Manchester Piccadilly. Just a pointer as to something coming up later in the programme, the 97-year-old thrill seeker reaching new heights and breaking her own Guinness World Record. Go Betty! What was it like watching her doing those Leap of Leaps in there? Awful. I was here four years ago. Makes you want to cry, but yeah, she got on fantastic.

13:56Yeah, so proud of her. It's incredible. I mean, she's partially sighted, in fact, almost blind. And yet she can do this. This isn't the first time she's done something like this, but at her age, it's just amazing, isn't it? So, no, she's a wonder. More on that a little bit later. Now, the world's greatest platform for creative freedom. That's how the Edinburgh Fringe is described by its organisers. The globally famous annual festival brings together performers from 60 countries across more than 4 ,000 productions throughout August. But can creative freedom go too far? One show this summer is drawing some anger.

14:34The sister of the British student Meredith Kirscher, who was murdered in Italy nearly 20 years ago, has criticised a stand-up comedy show being performed by the woman who was convicted but later acquitted of her murder. Amanda Knox was Meredith Kirscher's flatmate when she was killed in Perugia in 2007. Now 39 and married with children, Amanda Knox is performing a show she says is about motherhood and wrongful imprisonment. Speaking to the BBC, Stephanie Kirscher, Meredith's sister, called for Amanda Knox to think again. I think the problem with this particular project is that it is comedy. Whilst I appreciate comedy is there to push the boundaries, it very much normalises and trivialises violence against women and Meredith in particular.

15:25It's not a generic topic, it's targeting an individual traumatic case and an individual person and family. And I feel very strongly that Meredith wouldn't agree with that. and obviously I have read certain comments that she's made that Meredith would have found it funny and Meredith absolutely wouldn't find these topics of any comedy value. Well, a little earlier today, BBC Scotland's arts correspondent Pauline MacLean interviewed Amanda Knox. She told me what she said. Amanda Knox has done so much before. She's done TV drama, documentaries, podcasts and books But this foray into stand-up comedy is completely new.

16:07She said today that it's partly a return to her student theatre roots and partly because of her husband, who is a comedy writer and who introduced her to various people in the world of comedy. And Cartwheel is the show. It's a reference to the fact that the media said she was doing cartwheels in her cell at the time. But she says it's actually a show about motherhood and it's about explaining what happened to her very young children. Now, obviously, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a place where, as well as being absolutely huge, is where anything goes. And every year there just feels like there is a call to cancel someone because of their show, but it's allowed to go ahead.

16:47And I think she could see all of that would happen too. But I think this one, this particular show, was always going to be sensitive for the Kercher family who live in the UK and they are backing a petition to have the show cancelled. So I put some of those criticisms that it is an unsuitable topic for comedy to her. I'm not the first person to invent using comedy to talk about traumatic and difficult material. And I think that, again, I would hope that people will honestly engage with my work and recognise the deep heart and sensitivity that I bring to it as I tell a very personal story through a comedic lens.

17:26Yeah, she also says, like, what if it was your sister or your daughter that you were talking about? Well, the interesting irony of that is, like, a huge motivation for me doing this show is my daughter. Like, this is what that show is about. It's about how the world is unsafe and unfair towards women, and what does it mean to raise a daughter in that world knowing how bad it can be. Like, I've seen how bad, I've lived how bad it can be. and therefore, if anything, I think that, again, if they saw my show, they would recognise that. And Jane, I asked her if she might change the show, not necessarily cancel it, but consider the way that it's done, if the Karcher family asked her to and she said that she would absolutely welcome a chance to talk to them.

18:14She says that she has asked them many times, apparently, and says she feels that they would understand the show more if they actually saw it. But I think it's pretty unlikely that they're going to come to the Fringe for that. And so it is due to start tomorrow. I mean, is there anything, Pauline, that might stop that going ahead? I think it's unlikely. The Fringe is completely uncurated. Anything goes. That's the whole point of it. You choose to bring anything within reason to the festival and perform it. I think she's very aware of that. So it's only Amanda Knox herself who could cancel. And I think since she's sold out for at least the first part of the 11-day run, I suspect she's not going to.

18:56Pauline McLean there in Edinburgh. Police have imposed public safety measures in the Norfolk market town of Thetford after two police officers were injured last night in a second evening of disorder in an area which has seen a number of anti-immigration protests. Norfolk police say yesterday a crowd became physically aggressive towards officers. One was struck with a rock, another was seriously bitten. The government is reviewing whether former military barracks at RAF Barnham near Thetford could be used in the future to house asylum seekers. But this latest unrest has centred around four houses in Thetford itself.

19:35Protesters targeted those houses, believing them to be housing asylum seekers. Well, Scott Hussey is a Reform UK councillor for the nearby by Brex division, excuse me, on Norfolk County Council. The reason that tensions are running high is because the Home Office is opening a number of these HMOs across Thetford. People have a right to protest and I fully understand why they're feeling frustrated. They're feeling frustrated because the Home Office is just not listening. Well, I've been getting reaction to that view from Labour's Terry Jeremy, the MP for South West Norfolk, which includes the town of Thetford.

20:13I absolutely acknowledge that people have got legitimate concerns about immigration in Thetford and elsewhere. But what we've seen over the last couple of days, this is criminal behaviour. It goes way beyond the right to protest. We've seen police officers assaulted. We've been seeing damage to personal property. People literally dragged from their homes by protesters. I don't know the immigration status of those individuals. I don't know the legal status. They are human beings that have a right to be protected and to live a safe life. And we've got to call that out. And councillors like Scott Hussey, whatever political party, should also be calling out that behaviour for what it is.

20:54So are there legitimate concerns that your constituents have about immigration? There's obviously a big concern at the moment in Thetford about the proposals in relation to MOD Barnham Home Office is considering placing over 1 ,200 asylum seekers in that base. And there has been concerns and I've raised concerns about the lack of consultation, the lack of engagement with the local community. It is only a proposal at the moment, but those concerns are there. We are in an area where there are limited infrastructure already. There's limited public services and people are expressing those concerns.

21:30But what we've seen is way beyond those concerns. We've seen outright racism, homophobia, all sorts of abuse over the last few days and the last few weeks. And we got to stand together as a community of all political persuasions and say that this is not right. Do you think the crowds that have gathered are from that area or are they coming from elsewhere? where? There's a mixture, to be honest with you. I've lived in Fetford all my life. My family are from Fetford. I was the mayor of Fetford a few years before I was elected as the MP. I recognise a lot of the people attending these protests. Some of them I went to school with.

22:05But there is also an outside element who are deliberately spreading misinformation, deliberately ramping up some of the concerns. We've seen people travel here from all over the country, sort of inciting violence, inciting some of that behaviour. Lots of people in Fetford have been condemning what they've seen over the last few days. So you're saying some people have condemned it. Are there not some who say this is an expression of the fact that they feel public services aren't where they should be for local people who are paying their taxes and that that is an element of what's going on here?

22:39I think Thetford's very similar to many other communities where we have suffered for many years with poor services, particularly health services. If you look at all of the indices of concern around local hospitals in special measures, local mental health trusts in special measures, people are concerned that additional people coming in put extra strain on those services. I've been really clear as a Labour politician that public services over the last decade have been cut through austerity and we've got to restore those services. We've got to tackle the cost of living, which the government is trying to do.

23:12it's wrong to blame people that are coming in here legitimately claiming asylum as is their right to do. We are a very big military constituency. We've got RAF Marham within South West Norfolk, RAF Honington just down the road. Many of the people claiming asylum are from Afghanistan that supported our troops, put themselves at risk through interpretation and other services and that's their reason for claiming asylum. We need to reflect on who the people are that are asking for our help. Terry Jeremy, the local Labour MP. Now let's turn to the US. There have been 340 mass shootings in the country so far this year, defined as a single event in which at least three people die.

23:56The grief and distress caused by these repeated crimes hasn't translated into political will to dramatically overhaul the nation's gun laws. There's now another approach, prosecuting the parents of young people who go on fatal shooting sprees. Colt Gray was 14 when he took a gun into his high school near Atlanta in Georgia in 2024. He killed two students and two teachers and injured nine other people. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Last week, his father Colin Gray was sentenced to 15 years in prison for second-degree murder for his son's deadly attack.

24:36That charge of murder under a state law is a legal first. Colin Gray had given his son a semi-automatic assault rifle for Christmas, a few months before his school shooting spree, even though, as the judge put it, the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter and the teenager was clearly obsessed with violence. Mason Shermerhorn was one of those killed that day. His mother, Brianna, spoke in court on the day of the sentencing. Instead of acting, he chose to look away. Instead of intervening, he chose inaction. Instead of protecting his son from himself and protecting our community from the danger his son posed, he harmed him.

25:18That wasn't an accident. That wasn't bad luck. That wasn't simply poor judgment. That was a choice. a choice that handed a troubled teenager, the very weapon that was later used to murder my son. Well, Colin Gray's sentencing followed another similar case. In 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbly killed four people at his Michigan high school. In 2024, his parents, James and Jennifer, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors argued they'd failed to safely store a gun in their home and to address their son's worsening mental health. Jennifer Crumbly said this in court in her defence.

25:58We were good parents. We were the average family. We weren't perfect, but we loved our son. This could be any parent up here in my shoes. Ethan could be your child, could be your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, your brother, your sister. Well, they were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison, despite the fact that in court their son said they weren't to blame for what he'd done. Well, I've been hearing more about this from Professor Nila Bala, a law professor at University of California, Davis. She's been studying these cases and the nationwide debate they've sparked. So on the one hand, when people see an extraordinary case like this with such aberrational facts, with such violence, I think there is a human tendency to point to a failure of parenting.