Gendered counter terrorism? The potential impact of police officer perceptions of PREVENT policing

In July 2006, the UK Government published its counter-terrorism strategy known as CONTEST, with the aim to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism. The document has evolved through two updated versions [Home Office. (2009). Pursue, prevent, protect, prepare: The United Kingdom’s strategy for countering terrorism. London: HMSO; Home Office. (2011). CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s strategy for countering terrorism. London: Home Office] and outlines four work streams or strands, in which each outlines a specific element of counter-terrorism policy in the UK. These work streams are: PURSUE, which seeks to catch terrorists; PREPARE, which builds resilience to attacks; PROTECT, which hardens potential targets and PREVENT, which seeks to stop people becoming or supporting terrorists. This paper focuses on the PREVENT stream and explores the possible gendering of the role undertaken by police officers tasked with implementing PREVENT in the West Midlands. As part of this exploration, findings are presented, which enable the article to argue that the skill set PREVENT policing requires the officers tasked with its use to have and encourages the officers to assign a ‘gender’ to the role. Exactly how this ‘gender’ is assigned, what the ‘gender’ of PREVENT is thought to be by the officers and how these impacts on the implementation of PREVENT are then discussed. © 2014 Society for Terrorism Research