Only 3 weeks after the terror threat level of the U.K. being downgraded from “severe” to “substantial”, a knife attack took place at London Bridge on November 29, 2019. After murdering two people and injuring three others, Usman Khan, the 28-year-old perpetrator being early released in 2018, was shot dead by police. “The next thing I knew was he’s lying on the floor and there were two loud pops. You could see underneath, a stab with an explosive vest. I was scared because we were about as close as the police officers.” Karen Bosch, an eyewitness, still in shock when being interviewed by BBC. She is not the only one with such a panic fear, the public’s suspicion towards the legitimacy of the U.K.kinfe attack  Threat Level has been triggered after the incident.

Being tentatively identified as a lone actor attack, the U.K. police are probing more evidence on whether taken this issue as a revenge of ISIS. Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, attributed the tragedy to the 19% funding cuts on police and advocated a reconsideration of existing sentencing, prisons and the probation service in the U.K. Prime minister, Boris Johnson, further indicated that prisoners should not automatically be eligible for release in advance even with a license.

Since more case details are revealed, loopholes of U.K. police arise. Seemingly a perfect mechanism was set up in the U.K. to prevent reoffending: Khan had completed a rehabilitation scheme before gaining release permission. With an electronic tag, his whereabouts should be monitored by the police. Even being a participant of the Learning Together conference held by Cambridge University, this ruthless murderer maintained an equal partnership with higher education volunteers assisting him to be reaccepted by society. Unfortunately, rather than crime resistance, Khan eventually became a threat to public safety, revealing the neglected faultiness of existing UK police.

A former prison governor Lan Acheson exemplified the deficiencies of the current supervision system by disclosing the multi-agency management taking charge of Khan after his early release was originally intended for high-risk sex offenders. Lacking specific approaches towards various criminal types probably sow seeds of the next crisis. According to a government investigation, the two counter-terrorism being attended by Khan haven’t been fully tested. Another report from the National Audit Office shows a nearly 20% reduction of police employees since 2010. Since the police budget is too tight to afford sufficient employees with professional skills against crime, a discontinuous review can result in failures to follow supervising rules strictly. The huge gap between U.K. police’s ambition and their premature practice cause Mr. Acheson’s anxiety about malignant imitations of this incident while other 220 people with the similar threat level to Khan are still in the current prison system.

But a dilemma is even more awkward: such unpredicted low sophistication terrorism can intensify conflicts between citizens and prisoners unless U.K. police take more effective actions to deal with that anomie. Otherwise, the voice of setting more strict sentences on prisoners, and detaining criminals for a longer prison experience may become more common, which has already been a long-held argument in U.K.’s four work streams to reduce the terrorism risks.

In terms of criteria applied by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Committee (JTAC), it is too early to evaluate an attack in the U.K. as “likely” rather than “highly likely” when taking into account factors like threat information availability and terrorist capability. In response to the defective prison legislation requiring more amendments, a high level of vigilance should remain.