CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Shawcross has now disagreed publicly. The Home Office had, he said, ‘ignored’ key recommendations to beef up Prevent’s performance and the glass remained only ‘half full.’ I have some experience of bureaucratic sleight of hand at work when it comes to reviews and recommendations. When I was tasked by the Government to look into the Prison Service’s colossal and unforgivable failures in containing Islamist extremism a few years ago, I made 69 recommendations which were mysteriously repurposed into 11 without my consent; eight were finally accepted."

"Exit programs would generally work well in Germany, says Sofia Koller from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP). She has been researching how to deal with IS returnees for years. She warns that exit processes do not work linearly. Time and again, life crises could drive former extremists to radical ideology."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson wrote: "Tommy Robinson, a self-invented English ‘patriot’, was free to attend yesterday’s St George’s Day event in central London which descended into ugly clashes between participants and police. Earlier in the day, he had been released from court after successfully arguing that a police dispersal order that resulted in his arrest and charge in November last year was unlawfully applied to him due to a paperwork blunder. He says he will now sue the Metropolitan police.

Robinson has nearly half a million followers on social media. They have, by now, fully absorbed the narrative that when it comes to protest, Britain has a two-tier system of policing."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Why did Gideon Falter cross the road? Or try to? That is a question that went viral this weekend. A video emerged of Falter, who leads the Campaign Against Antisemitism, being threatened by police for trying to cross a pro-Palestinian protest in central London. He was wearing a kippah and carrying a prayer shawl bag, and had reportedly just emerged from a synagogue with some friends and was trying to get home. Police officers had spotted him leaving the pavement on a collision course with protestors and intervened. A tense standoff unfolded, with an officer telling him in that his ‘openly Jewish’ appearance was ‘antagonising’ the crowd. A calamitous initial response by the Metropolitan Police which, in effect, said that being recognisably Jewish was ‘provocative’ compounded calls for the force’s beleaguered boss Sir Mark Rowley to resign."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Aldous Huxley’s dystopian best seller Brave New World, published back in 1934, envisaged a society where stability was enforced by a numbing drug called ‘soma’. Constant consumption of soma, mandated by the state, dulled the senses, vanished despair and discouraged rebellion. I was reminded of this by comments made by some of the Times‘ new crime commissioners as they launch a year-long project to fix our broken criminal justice system. They were speculating as to why we weren’t seeing a national jail insurrection similar to what happened here in the spring of 1990 when multiple prisons across the country exploded in violent disorder. After all, many of the precursors that existed then are now present once again: severe overcrowding, demoralised and overwhelmed staff, endemic brutality and squalor.” 

"This relatively young branch is known for its extreme violence: assassinations, beheadings and torture are associated with it. Above all, it can still gain power, its members would be able to obtain “the funds they need”, assured the AFP Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the NGO Counter Extremism project. According to a UN report dating from February 2022, EI-K is also expanding: “The numbers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan have increased from 2,200, ‘according to previous estimates, at nearly 4,000, following the release of several thousand prisoners.’"

"Professor Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and author of Screwed: Britain's Prison Crisis and How To Escape It, was shocked when he came across the figures."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson: "Every morning, men and women serving on the front line of His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service pull on a cheap uniform and go to work in what's been called the most hostile work environment in Europe.

The endemic violence in our jails means many of them are ending their shifts in hospital rather than home with their families.

A month ago, an officer went on duty on B wing in HMP Whitemoor, one of our maximum security prisons. He left in an ambulance and was put on a ventilator, unconscious, after a vicious assault."

"'A successful individual, such as a celebrity or someone who stands out in their field, can help make extremist beliefs more appealing to regular people,' says Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher at the Counter Extremism Project."

"Released by the Counter Extremism Project, titled “An Unholy Alliance: Connections between Extremism and Illicit Trade in East Africa”, the report highlighted the growing threat to regional stability posed by illicit markets and trade driven by corruption.

The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) is an international policy organization led by a distinguished group of former world leaders and diplomats based in Germany, New York, and London."