Radicalisation on the rise as teenage terror arrests hit record levels
A record number of children have been arrested for terrorism, official figures show, as a government adviser warned of an increasing threat from online radicalisation.
Home Office figures published on Thursday showed that 42 children aged under 17 were arrested last year, nearly one in five of the total number of people held for terror-related offences.
It was the highest number since records began in 2002, up by a third on 2022’s figure of 32 and double the number three years ago.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the increase could be linked to “isolated” teenagers being radicalised in “malign online spaces”.
Although there had been evidence of both far-Right and Islamist radicalisation, Mr Hall said the ideology was often a “muddle of prejudices and hatred”.
“The ideological component here is projected online in gore, black humour, memes, kill counts, livestream, plus official publications of groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State,” he said.
Mr Hall warned that the risk of children being radicalised by extremism on social media was “a blindspot” in new rules being drawn up under the Online Safety Act to tackle toxic content online.
“The internet is a major source of radicalisation and self-radicalisation of children, resulting in a well-documented increase in children being investigated and arrested for terrorism offences,” Mr Hall wrote in a submission to a consultation by the regulator on its planned new code of conduct, which aims to protect the public from illegal content online.
But despite this, he added: “Ofcom appears to have a blind spot in its analysis of risk. It fails to consider that age is a risk factor relating to the harm used by terrorism content.
“The necessary special protection for children against exposure to terrorism content is missing.”
Ideological extremism
The data also showed that the number of people arrested for terrorism-related offences was at its highest since 2019, the year of the London Bridge terror attack by Usman Khan in which two Cambridge students were stabbed to death.
The total of 219 arrests in 2023 was up 31 per cent on the 167 in 2022.
Islamist extremists remained the predominant ideology for people held in custody for terrorism-connected offences, at 64.8 per cent of the total. Far-Right extremists accounted for their highest proportion on record, at 26.2 per cent.
Disseminating terrorist material was the most common reason for people being arrested by police, followed by collection of information useful for an act of terrorism and membership of a proscribed organisation.
