Ministers are “failing to learn the lessons” from the Southport attack and allowing violence-obsessed teenagers to remain a “catastrophic” threat to society, lawyers for victims of the atrocity have said ahead of the findings of an official inquiry.
A report on the July 2024 attack by the judge Sir Adrian Fulford, to be released on Monday, is expected to strongly criticise failings by a series of agencies, including the counter-terrorism programme Prevent.
The killer, Axel Rudakubana, was referred three times to Prevent but concerns were dismissed, partly because he did not express a clear ideology.
Counter-terrorism officials have since promised that those who are not clearly motivated by jihadism or other beliefs will now pass through Prevent if they have a clear obsession with extreme violence, like Rudakubana.
However, a Guardian analysis has found that barely one in 10 of the 3,400 cases highlighting these concerns in children and teenagers went on to receive anti-radicalisation support in the year to March 2025.
Chris Walker, the solicitor for the families of the three murdered girls – Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine – said the system was “not fit for purpose and must undergo fundamental changes to reduce serious risks to society.”
He said: “It seems to us that those with an ideological component to their crimes are treated more severely – and monitored more closely with greater involvement from state agencies.
“And those without an ideology component to their violence or intended violence are given lesser sentences despite their clear meticulous planning and mass murder fantasies.”
Official figures show there were nearly 300 Prevent referrals of children of primary school age who, like Rudakubana, had an intense interest in brutality but no clear ideology.
A further 3,000 referrals over the same concerns were made about teenagers in the year to March 2025. The vast majority of these 3,300 referrals related to under 17s with multiple, unclear or no ideology, while 336 related to an obsession with extreme violence.
However, only 11% of these were deemed suitable for further work with the counter-radicalisation programme Channel. By comparison, Channel took on 34% of those referred for right-wing extremism and 26% for Islamist extremism.
Britain’s top counter-terror officer, Laurence Taylor, warned in the Guardian last week that Prevent was being “overwhelmed” by referrals for those interested in violence but where no ideology was involved.
Last month, a 17-year-old who was “obsessed” with Rudakubana avoided jail after being convicted of planning to carry out a copycat attack. The teenager had been referred to Prevent twice, including as recently as last May, but had no clear ideology such as jihadism or right-wing extremism.
Walker, of the law firm Bond Turner, said the Southport inquiry had been assured that those who had unclear ideologies but a fascination with extreme violence “would now pass through the Prevent gateway to more stringent state intervention”.
“But what we’re seeing with these statistics and evidence in the attempted copycat case is that these supposed changes have not been filtered down to the people on the frontline dealing with referrals,” he added.
Nicola Ryan-Donnelly, a of the law firm Fletchers which represents the physically and psychologically injured children, said the inquiry showed the need for a “serious shake up in our system to ensure that a lack of ideology does not protect perpetrators over their victims”.
She said Britain faced an increasing threat from violence-obsessed individuals with muddled beliefs – as well as those who express a misogynistic hatred of women and girls: “Until we begin to properly manage these evolving threats, dangerous individuals without clear motives will continue to fall through the cracks.”
Nicola Brook, a solicitor for three adult survivors of the Southport attack, said the state was failing to tackle those who “do not fit the terrorist mould”.
She said: “It has been proven time and time again that the Prevent programme is not fit for purpose but we are also gravely concerned that it is the wrong mechanism to use for individuals who have an obsession with extreme violence.”
Brook, of the law firm Broudie Jackson Canter, represents the dance teacher Leanne Lucas, businessman John Hayes and the teaching assistant Heidi Liddle. Lucas and Hayes suffered life-threatening injuries in the attack while Liddle shielded one young girl from the attacker by barricading themselves in a toilet.
She said Prevent was “not equipped to deal with dangerous young people, such as Rudakubana, who did not commit a terrorist attack but did pose a catastrophic risk to society – a risk that was missed multiple times”.
Brook said: “Not only is the state failing to learn lessons from these harrowing attacks but it also has yet to acknowledge the imperative need to provide another system that can effectively deal with these dangerous individuals who do not fit the terrorist mould.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain with the families of Bebe, Elsie, Alice and all those who were harmed by the horrific attack that took place in Southport on 29 July 2024.
“Prevent remains a vital tool for keeping us safe from those who would do us harm. We will continue to ensure the programme has the capabilities it needs to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.”
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