Community Intelligence

This article is part of the Counter-Terrorism Portal project of Spinwatch.

Community Intelligence is a term used in the PREVENT strategy to describe the acquisition of "information that may be unspecific and ambiguous about local individuals or local places that cause concern or suspicion locally". In the context of PREVENT, it almost exclusively relates to acquiring intelligence on the Muslim community.

The term is used in relation to objective 6 of the PREVENT strategy, which aims to "develop intelligence, analysis and research" about the threat of radicalisation and terrorism in Britain's Muslim communities.

According a leaked police document, the purpose of "community intelligence" is to allow the police to establish mechanisms that will ensure information on the Muslim community can be acquired and a Rich Picture understanding can be generated. Once the community intelligence is established, the police are in a position to target their activities and interventions more meticulously.

The responsibility of developing community intelligence falls to Counter Terrorism Intelligence Officers, who aim to communicate with different elements/institutions in their command areas for the sake of raising “awareness of potential terrorist material [and] development of a Rich Picture. This intelligence assists the development of Operation Delphinus, the police operation which assigns different counter-terrorism tasks to local partners."

See Also

• PREVENT
• CONTEST
• Counter-Terrorism Timeline
• Scottish Preventing Violent Extremism Unit
• Project Rich Picture
• Prevent Funding