Isolation could drive young people to extremism, police warn

Date21 December 2020
Published date21 December 2020
So far this year a total of 3,000 pieces of suspected terrorist content have been flagged up to the Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit CTIRU compared to 2,796 in 2019 -a rise of around 7%.

But the number of referrals of right-wing content went from 134 in 2019, to 192 between January 1 and November 20 this year, a rise of 43%.

An increasing number of children are also being arrested for terrorism offences at a time when the number of adults detained has dropped.

A total of 11 under 18s were arrested in the year ending September 2019, and this rose to 17 under 18s in the year to September 2020.

Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Southworth from the CTIRU said that one unforeseen consequence of the global pandemic could be young people being radicalised.

He said: "There has been a slight shift during the pandemic, which may simply reflect people being at home more, and ultimately perhaps spending more time online.

"Perhaps in some instances sadly people who have less people to speak to perhaps recoursing to online media for greater quantities of their time because they've been stuck in self-isolating or lacking people to come into contact with.

"It could be a sad corollary really of the Covid pandemic that we've not yet really fully realised."

The unit published a blog by one of its sergeants, identified only as Paul, on Monday, who warned parents that their children may be viewing terrorist material online during the Christmas break.

He wrote: "It would be misguided to think that the youngsters finding terrorist propaganda online and being sucked in by its eye-catching graphics and false promises of martyrdom are archetypical terrorist 'suspects'.

"They're not -they vary by gender and ethnic background; some are...

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