Conference Report: Selsdon Park, London (pdf, 1.6 MB) - EXOCoP
Conference Report: Selsdon Park, London (pdf, 1.6 MB) - EXOCoP
Conference Report: Selsdon Park, London (pdf, 1.6 MB) - EXOCoP
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CONFERENCE REPORT<br />
European Union Projects<br />
Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners<br />
and<br />
Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation<br />
<strong>Conference</strong> on<br />
Engaging with Violent Extremist Offenders in Prison<br />
and on Probation<br />
<strong>Selsdon</strong> <strong>Park</strong>, <strong>London</strong>, United Kingdom<br />
Monday 4th Wednesday 6th October 2010<br />
1
European Union Project: Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation<br />
European Union Project: Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation<br />
Project Summary<br />
Project Summary<br />
• To develop and research methods of interventions used with violent radical offenders;<br />
• To study the intervention methods developed by the Violence Prevention Network working<br />
with young offenders in German Prisons sentenced for violence and from extremist Muslim<br />
and right wing backgrounds;<br />
• To develop and study a pilot community-based programme in the UK between <strong>London</strong><br />
Probation Trust, Stockwell Green Community Services and <strong>London</strong> College of Business<br />
Management & Information Technology supporting more effective supervision of radicalised<br />
Muslim offenders released from prison on license and under probation supervision;<br />
‣ To pilot and study a community based partnership in the UK between <strong>London</strong> Probation<br />
Trust and Stockwell Green Community Services and <strong>London</strong> College of BMIT supporting<br />
more effective supervision of radicalised Muslim offenders<br />
‣ To carry out research and evaluation of the two different models of intervention and<br />
engagement<br />
‣ To host expert seminars in the UK and Germany to highlight issues and share learning<br />
‣ 1 st trans-national <strong>Conference</strong> held in Berlin, May 2010, to inform and develop methods of<br />
intervention and engagement<br />
‣ 2 nd trans-national <strong>Conference</strong> held in the UK, October 2010, to showcase project learning<br />
and best practice and to examine current practice<br />
• To evaluate the two different live methods of intervention, identifying best practice<br />
approaches, obstacles to success and issues of transferability;<br />
• To showcase project learning at <strong>Conference</strong>s and Seminars.<br />
The TPVR project studies methods of rehabilitation and reintegration which have proven<br />
successful in working with violent offenders from religious fundamentalist and right-wing political<br />
extremist backgrounds. The aims of these interventions are to de-radicalise and prevent exoffenders<br />
from recommitting acts of violence and terrorism.<br />
This project will be carried out by:<br />
1. Studying the work of Violence Prevention Network in Germany who engage with violent<br />
young prisoners from religious fundamentalist and extreme right wing backgrounds;<br />
2. Developing a pilot community-based programme in the UK between <strong>London</strong> Probation<br />
Trust, Stockwell Green Community Services and <strong>London</strong> College of BMIT supporting<br />
more effective supervision of radicalised Muslim offenders;<br />
3. Commissioning research to evaluate the two different live methods of intervention<br />
identifying best practice approaches, obstacles to success and issues of transferability<br />
Dissemination of learning from this project is by way of conferences, publications and local<br />
seminars in partner countries.<br />
Project Partners<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>London</strong> Probation Trust, UK (lead partner)<br />
National Offender Management Service (NOMS), UK<br />
Stockwell Green Community Services (SGCS), UK<br />
<strong>London</strong> College of Business Management & Information Technology (LCBMIT), UK<br />
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany<br />
European Institute for Social Services (EISS), UK<br />
Project Outputs<br />
‣ To study the model of intervention and engagement used by VPN with violent young<br />
prisoners from right wing and Muslim backgrounds<br />
1<br />
2 3
European Union Project: Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners<br />
European Union Project: Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners<br />
Project Summary<br />
Project Summary<br />
• To research the key influencing factors that can radicalise prisoners and offenders;<br />
• To train criminal justice staff working in prisons or with prisoners released on license in the<br />
community to be aware of these factors;<br />
• To provide recommendations for improved management and supervision of terrorist related<br />
offenders;<br />
• To develop a range of training materials that might be used in other EU countries;<br />
• To transfer information & learning to other EU countries through a network of interested<br />
practitioners within the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and other EU countries.<br />
This EU funded project addresses the training and awareness-raising needs of Criminal Justice<br />
staff working in Prisons and in the community with prisoners and ex-prisoners released on<br />
licence. It seeks to raise awareness of the features of prison life and community supervision that<br />
could be factors or influences in violent radicalisation.<br />
Netherlands; and recommendations for management and supervision of terrorist related<br />
offenders.<br />
‣ To develop a transferable range of training package & materials for use in the UK,<br />
Germany, the Netherlands and possibly wider EU countries to support Criminal Justice<br />
staff working with radicalised offenders.<br />
‣ 85 Criminal Justice staff trained in the UK and Germany.<br />
‣ Expert seminars held in the UK and Germany to highlight issues and share learning of<br />
working with violent right-wing extremists and those from a Muslim background<br />
‣ 1 st trans-national <strong>Conference</strong> held in Spain, January 2010, to inform and develop the<br />
training course and to disseminate information.<br />
‣ 2 nd trans-national <strong>Conference</strong> held in the UK, October 2010 (date to be confirmed), to<br />
showcase project’s training pilots, learning and best practice outline and share research<br />
in relation to extremism and radicalisation and look at examples of current practice.<br />
‣ Evaluation of training pilots by the University of Bremen.<br />
‣ Best practice network of interested practitioners established between partner countries<br />
and other EU members states.<br />
The project will design and pilot staff training programmes for staff who work with prisoners,<br />
released prisoners and those on supervision. The training programme and materials will be<br />
designed from an international standpoint to examine how transferable such training might be<br />
across a number of European criminal justice systems.<br />
The project uniquely brings together the expertise of an established and respected NGO in<br />
Germany, the Violence Prevention Network, with the criminal justice experience of the UK,<br />
through <strong>London</strong> Probation and NOMS, in delivering expert courses for prison and community<br />
based staff.<br />
The project is developing a unique "through the gate" high quality training package that can be<br />
used by staff working with prisoners in prison or those released on licence. Stockwell Green<br />
Community Services in the UK are an experienced NGO dedicated to offering resettlement routes<br />
into education and employment for those caught up in or in danger of becoming violent radicals.<br />
This combination will ensure that the training delivered to staff will provide sufficient awareness of<br />
the issues for staff working with prisoners, licensees or offenders in the community.<br />
Project Partners<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>London</strong> Probation, UK (lead partner)<br />
Secretaría General de Instituciones Penitenciarias (SGIP), Spain<br />
National Offender Management Service (NOMS), UK<br />
Stockwell Green Community Services, UK<br />
CEP – The European Organisation for Probation, The Netherlands<br />
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany<br />
University of Bremen, Germany<br />
Project Outputs<br />
‣ To carry out research on what acts to radicalise prisoners and offenders; current practice<br />
and experiences in Europe, with a particular focus on the UK, Germany and the<br />
3<br />
4 5
Welcome<br />
Setting the Scene: welcome from conference co-chairs<br />
Leo Tigges, Secretary General of CEP the European Organisation for Probation<br />
Richard Pickering, Head of NOMS Security<br />
Group (conference co-chair)<br />
Stephen Moran, Director of Business<br />
Development, <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
(conference co-chair)<br />
Leo Tigges explained that when the project began around<br />
18 months ago there were several aims:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
To study the factors that can radicalise prisoners and<br />
offenders;<br />
To train criminal justice staff working with prisoners and<br />
offenders released into the community;<br />
To provide recommendations for improved management<br />
and supervision of terrorism related offenders;<br />
To develop a range of training materials for staff and to<br />
transfer information and learning to other EU countries<br />
that were not involved in the project.<br />
He stated that the experience already gained within the<br />
community context especially within Muslim communities<br />
in the UK - was of great importance.<br />
He said probation and the prison sector needed to work<br />
together. The probation sector was fairly united in the<br />
European Organisation for Probation; nearly every ministry<br />
of justice was a member of the CEP. However, there was<br />
no organisation that united a prison sector across Europe.<br />
This was a priority, not only for this project in which it was<br />
so important, but also on a European level because then<br />
the experiences would become much clearer and be more<br />
effectively disseminated. It was also a priority on these<br />
topics for which probation and the prison sector had to<br />
work together, because the end-to-end management of<br />
offenders was very important.<br />
the project, but not the end of the process in which we were<br />
trying to join experiences and find out what best practices<br />
there were in this field, so there would be continuity.<br />
He said the conference agenda was deliberately ambitious.<br />
They were looking to build on the discussions held at the<br />
Segovia conference in January, which identified a number<br />
of challenges, differences and areas of common ground.<br />
The conference would be focussing in particular on the<br />
experience gained from two projects led by <strong>London</strong><br />
Probation Trust (LPT). He wanted to test some of the<br />
assumptions people brought from their own areas of work<br />
against the experiences of others.<br />
He expected and hoped there would be an open and<br />
challenging exchange of ideas during the conference.<br />
There was a fantastic range of speakers from a wide range<br />
of backgrounds.<br />
He hoped delegates could learn from each others different<br />
perspectives.<br />
Stephen Moran gave a brief overview of LPT, a lead partner<br />
in both projects. He said the Trust was unique, it was<br />
possibly the largest probation trust in the world; managing<br />
approximately 20% of the national caseload and serving a<br />
<strong>London</strong> population of 7.96 million.<br />
Every year Trust staff prepared 33,000 court reports and<br />
worked with 3,300 new victims of sexual or violent crime.<br />
They had a caseload of over 13,000 victims.<br />
The annual budget was £150m and they employed 3,000<br />
staff. They were organised across 23 local delivery units<br />
responsible for offender management. There was a<br />
separate Interventions Director responsible for delivering<br />
Community Payback, offending behaviour programmes<br />
and approved premises.<br />
He said the Trust was a lead partner in the Reducing<br />
Influences that Radicalise Prisoners (RIRP) and Towards<br />
Preventing Violent Radicalisation (TPVR) projects, along<br />
with other European projects. These were two very<br />
important projects. There was a broad range of partners<br />
from the security and voluntary sectors.<br />
The conference brought together delegates from across<br />
Europe to highlight issues and share learning.<br />
He added that in this field, we could only be successful<br />
by looking at how prison and probation could work more<br />
closely by exploring and assembling experiences, how<br />
the multi-agency approach functioned and what were the<br />
advantages, disadvantages and best practice and how the<br />
involvement of the community was organised.<br />
This was a process. The conference would be the end of<br />
6 7
Overview of the European Commission Projects<br />
Nick Hammond, Project Manager of Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners,<br />
Equalities and Community Engagement, <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
Sara Robinson, Project Manager of Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation and<br />
Assistant Chief Officer (Central Extremism Unit), <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
extended from Stockwell Green to a number of other<br />
community groups.<br />
It was important to note, that in studying some of this<br />
research the project had had a slight change of direction.<br />
The original intention was to produce analysis using two<br />
case studies. It was difficult to do that though, particularly<br />
in the UK, because the target group was very small and<br />
so the individuals would be easily identifiable. Secondly,<br />
because the target group was small a lot of attention<br />
and research was being placed on the same individuals<br />
and the project did not want to create a type of celebrity,<br />
which could create problems in itself. Therefore, the project<br />
shifted to looking at the specific projects and what they<br />
were delivering.<br />
Nick Hammond said LPT knew that, due to its size and<br />
diversity, it would need to address the impact of violent<br />
extremism. Its staff in prisons would need to know how to<br />
work with those convicted of terrorism offences, as well as<br />
offenders in the community convicted of other offences,<br />
but vulnerable to radicalisation and violent extremism.<br />
They began in May 2008 and built on the ongoing work<br />
collated during two previous successful EU projects on<br />
hate crime.<br />
They wanted to understand the recruitment process into<br />
the violent radicalisation of individuals in custody, on<br />
licence and in the community. They also wanted to know<br />
what could be used and learnt from their work with violent<br />
extremists.<br />
They wanted to learn how this knowledge might be better<br />
used by staff in face-to-face work with offenders and what<br />
knowledge might be transferable across EU states.<br />
They wanted to conduct research into existing practices of<br />
working with radicalised offenders and violent extremists.<br />
They also wanted to develop a variety of training processes<br />
for staff and those working in communities within these<br />
groups.<br />
Two international conferences were held to bring EU<br />
countries together, developing potential for networking.<br />
Key were the partners in the RIRP project:<br />
1.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.<br />
<strong>London</strong> Probation Trust the lead partner and project<br />
lead<br />
CEP the European Organisation for Probation in<br />
Europe<br />
NOMS<br />
Stockwell Green Community Services<br />
5.<br />
6.<br />
7.<br />
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany<br />
University of Bremen, Bremen Institute of Criminal<br />
Policy<br />
Spanish Penitentiary Service<br />
Research was commissioned in two parts. The first looked at<br />
what had been done in probation in Europe and worldwide.<br />
There was also some research interviewing offenders and<br />
ex-offenders about their experiences in prison and in the<br />
community. This was used to develop training methods<br />
in the UK and Germany - 85 criminal justice staff were<br />
trained.<br />
The evaluation is being conducted by the University of<br />
Bremen.<br />
Sara Robinson said the TPVR project was due to end in<br />
January 2011. LPT was leading the project with the support<br />
of NOMS.<br />
The project was exploring interventions delivered by VPN<br />
in Germany and Stockwell Green Community Services,<br />
specifically with these offending groups.<br />
Through the TPVR project, research would be carried out<br />
and developed into interventions with radicalised offenders,<br />
identifying what worked and what did not work.<br />
The project was in two parts. The first was to look at<br />
intervention methods developed by VPN in Germany, who<br />
were working with young offenders sentenced for right<br />
wing, violent offences and also, more recently, offenders<br />
from the Muslim community, who had been involved in acts<br />
of violence.<br />
Secondly, in the UK they were looking to develop<br />
community based programmes for supporting more<br />
effective supervision for radicalised Muslims who had been<br />
released on licence.<br />
The project hoped to study both methods, identify best<br />
practice and to sum-up the obstacles to success in both<br />
countries.<br />
The outcomes aimed for were to produce a research<br />
report and to develop a set of guidelines for practitioners.<br />
Guidelines for managers and policy makers also needed<br />
to be inter-related.<br />
A DVD was also being produced about how learning could<br />
be shared further.<br />
In terms of progress to date, an interim report had been<br />
produced and an evaluation of the methodology had been<br />
The other issue considered was that the contexts were very<br />
different in the UK to Germany. In Germany the VPN model<br />
used group=work in a custodial environment, facilitated by<br />
two highly trained workers.<br />
In the UK, since 2005, anti-terrorism legislation had led<br />
to the imprisonment of a range of people involved in the<br />
preparation of terrorist activity, such as people being<br />
sentenced on the basis of activity like the use of pamphlets<br />
or attendance at training camps. This created a wide range<br />
of people they would be working with.<br />
LPT had previous experience of working with offenders<br />
whose crimes were motivated by hatred, but little experience<br />
of working with people motivated by religion or faith. They<br />
had some knowledge, but they needed to develop it.<br />
The LPT model was based on an individual basis rather<br />
than groups, before and after release from prison. The<br />
Probation Service had a statutory responsibility for<br />
managing their risk, but could not do this on their own - if<br />
they wanted to make a difference they needed to work with<br />
non-statutory, Muslim community organisations to address<br />
the socio, spiritual and cultural ideology.<br />
The evaluation looked at the key principles behind the<br />
methodology:<br />
to identify key areas of best practice;<br />
to identify what is the difference between the target<br />
groups;<br />
to identify what are the professional skills needed;<br />
to identify how are different models managed;<br />
to identify how can we measure success;<br />
Sara Robinson ended by thanking everyone who had been<br />
involved in the project.<br />
8 9
Perspectives on Violent Extremism and Radicalisation<br />
The View from Central Government<br />
Asim Hafeez, Head of Prevent Delivery<br />
Unit, Office for Security and Counter<br />
Terrorism, Home Office<br />
Asim Hafeez said the Prevent agenda in the UK had been<br />
running for the last three to four years. His responsibility<br />
covered the delivery of aspects of preventing violent<br />
extremism, ranging from; delivery in local communities; to<br />
engaging with local authorities and community groups; to<br />
policy delivery and working with the criminal justice sector.<br />
Also included were community intervention providers,<br />
who did some of the face to face de-radicalisation in<br />
communities and in prisons.<br />
He said we could not be too complacent. They tried<br />
very hard to articulate the threat, to get communities to<br />
understand why we were doing this. In terms of preventing<br />
violent extremism, as opposed to preventing terrorism,<br />
they talked more about the threat to individuals. Individuals<br />
and communities were vulnerable. It was more practical for<br />
communities to talk about the threat to their young people,<br />
the threat they may face from being drawn into violent<br />
extremism.<br />
Part of what they were doing under the Prevent agenda<br />
was to talk to communities and delivery partners about<br />
the difficulties faced. Articulation of threat was incredibly<br />
important, he said.<br />
He spoke about pathways to radicalisation and the body of<br />
evidence that explained what caused radicalisation, but he<br />
said we were not as acutely aware of the vulnerabilities. He<br />
said we may be aware of some of the pathways that lead<br />
people to radicalisation, but were we aware of what made a<br />
person vulnerable to getting there in the first place?<br />
He asked how success could be evaluated and agreed<br />
it was very difficult. However, he said we would be<br />
irresponsible if, in the absence of definitive analysis, we<br />
stood back and said we were not going to do anything.<br />
We had a responsibility to maintain the security and safety<br />
of our communities and therefore we had to make sure a<br />
process of evaluation was going on, that we were delivering<br />
what we could to the best of our ability.<br />
A perception in the Muslim community in particular, he<br />
said, was that the Prevent agenda was being done to<br />
communities not with communities. He said we had to<br />
implement Prevent with communities. Communities had to<br />
be on-board to deliver the Prevent agenda and in order to<br />
have community buy-in we had to know the right people in<br />
the communities.<br />
He congratulated NOMS and the Probation Service for<br />
the work that was ongoing across the country to prevent<br />
radicalisation.<br />
Questions from the floor:<br />
Q1. How do you see the Prevent agenda playing out in a<br />
European context?<br />
AH: He said what he had described was a UK government<br />
policy. He added that partnership working was happening<br />
across Europe, there was an enormous amount of<br />
sharing of knowledge, opportunities to meet colleagues at<br />
conferences, encouraging networking and partnership was<br />
developing.<br />
The View from Academia<br />
Maaike Lousberg, TNO Defence, Security<br />
and Safety<br />
Maaike Lousberg spoke about research she had conducted<br />
in 2007, which began with studying how you could tell if<br />
someone was radicalised. Research was also conducted<br />
into interventions.<br />
She explained she had attended a lot of conferences on<br />
radicalisation and spoken to a lot of people that worked<br />
in that field. Most told her they knew when someone was<br />
radicalised, they wanted to do something about it, but they<br />
didnt know what to do. A lot of people told her they needed<br />
interventions.<br />
She tried to gain insight into what had been written. There<br />
was information in many reports, but nothing was brought<br />
together and structured, so that was what she tried to do.<br />
Questions were focussed on what was out there, what did<br />
frontline workers have and did it work? Why did it work or<br />
why didnt it work? What else did we need to know?<br />
They looked at two kinds of interventions focussing<br />
on radical Muslims and the extreme right wing. They<br />
also focussed on interventions carried out directly with<br />
individuals. Thirdly they focussed on specific groups that<br />
could carry out such interventions.<br />
They collected more than 200 interventions, which they<br />
gave to policy makers, researchers and some frontline<br />
workers for their thoughts.<br />
There were a lot of differences in their responses, a<br />
lot of the interventions focussed on the prevention of<br />
radicalisation. but few could be used when someone<br />
was already radicalised. Also, a lot of interventions were<br />
focussed on radical Muslims rather than on the extreme<br />
right. The third issue raised was that there were almost no<br />
repressive interventions.<br />
The next question they wanted to know was does it<br />
work?<br />
The interventions described were all used by frontline<br />
workers. They asked about 300 frontline workers if they<br />
had used the intervention and if they thought it worked.<br />
The conclusions were that they thought the interventions<br />
were effective. TNO asked why this was, as most of the<br />
researchers and experts they had spoken to were more<br />
critical than that.<br />
There were also some conclusions about specific<br />
interventions. One of them was about education. If you<br />
wanted to educate people about what it was like to be a<br />
radical or how the pattern of radicalisation took place, it<br />
had to be focussed on experience.<br />
She spoke about guaranteed continuity, if projects were<br />
not continued; you would not reach your goal. A lack of<br />
effective measures was still a problem.<br />
She then spoke about what had happened since the<br />
research was carried out in 2007.<br />
She said the general discussion about what radicalisation<br />
was still existed and she wondered whether this would<br />
ever be resolved. It was difficult to describe in a couple of<br />
sentences.<br />
She said there was a lack of interventions in prisons and<br />
interventions for other types of radicalisation. There was<br />
also a lack of effective measures.<br />
Research was taking place in the Netherlands into the<br />
evaluation of specific interventions.<br />
She said they had now started a new project looking into<br />
a non-linear model of radicalisation, to develop curative<br />
interventions and test them in the field.<br />
Questions from the floor:<br />
Q1. Did you get any ideas as to the answer of what<br />
interventions work and with whom?<br />
Maaike Lousberg: That was the problem. You cannot do<br />
that. If everybody says it works, experts say they are not<br />
sure about that, because you have no way to measure this.<br />
That is why we started defining the minimal conditions of<br />
effectiveness, but to answer your question we still do not<br />
know. What do the people in the field perceive as effective?<br />
If they all say everything they do is very effective and<br />
successful it is kind of hard to believe and the problem we<br />
had with that is they did not really have specific reasons for<br />
why it was effective.<br />
We tried to target some of it by saying if you are going to<br />
do this, you need to do this and this and this or it will not<br />
work.<br />
Q2. Did the project have clear objectives at the beginning<br />
or did you ask what objectives there were for the<br />
interventions?<br />
Maaike Lousberg: That is actually one of the conclusions;<br />
to say that there should be a base structure that everybody<br />
uses for interventions so you can do exactly what you are<br />
saying.<br />
Q3. Did the people you spoke to have a definition of<br />
radicalisation?<br />
Maaike Lousberg: There were about 300 people who<br />
worked with Muslim radicalisation and the extreme right.<br />
I asked them to define what they thought radicalisation<br />
was in this specific field. The answers they gave were very<br />
diverse; that is how I concluded there is not one specific<br />
view of what radicalisation is.<br />
10 11
The View from the Community<br />
Toaha Qureshi <strong>MB</strong>E, Chief Executive of Stockwell Green Community Services and<br />
<strong>London</strong> College of Business Management and IT<br />
Ideology and the Language of Violent Extremism: Terminology and Counter-<br />
Narratives<br />
Dr Omar Ashour, Director of Middle East Studies, University of Exeter<br />
In the case of Jihaadism of the Islamist political ideologies,<br />
Jihaadism in particular was an ideology that believed in<br />
fighting as the most legitimate and sometimes the most<br />
effective means for social and political change.<br />
Jihaadism was a political Islamist ideology and we should<br />
not conflict it with other Islamist ideologies.<br />
He said there were multiple dimensions of the new counternarrative.<br />
Toaha Qureshi began by emphasising that when statutory<br />
bodies started to think of working with community<br />
organisations there were three fundamental factors they<br />
needed to observe;<br />
issues of education, employability and enhanced training.<br />
They also engaged with universities and educational bodies<br />
to encourage them to support employability enhancement<br />
and training programmes.<br />
Dr Ashour spoke about research he had been conducting<br />
over the last 10 years into de-radicalisation what were its<br />
causes and what were the conditions that underlined its<br />
success or failure?<br />
Fuad Nahdi, Director of Radical Middle<br />
Way<br />
1.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
Does this community group or individual have that<br />
particular knowledge about the problem and the<br />
knowledge about the community?<br />
Does this group have credibility among the<br />
community?<br />
Do they have a track record, have they got<br />
experience?<br />
In 1999-2004 SGCS started programmes called SEED and<br />
PROSEED. They were evaluated in 2003 and put in place<br />
very effectively in 2004-2008.<br />
LPT and NOMS then came in with two projects RIRP<br />
and TPVR. Those people who were referred by LPT,<br />
had said, had LPT not devised these ways to work with<br />
community organisations, they would have re-offended.<br />
The measurement of success was therefore the number<br />
of these people that did not re-offend. To the organisation<br />
and to LPT that made it a success. It all depended how you<br />
define success, he said.<br />
He said the community organisation had spoken about<br />
sustainability and that the government was not going to<br />
support the programmes all the time, so they devised<br />
mechanisms by which they could support themselves.<br />
They were now in a position, he said, where they could<br />
support these kinds of programmes. They were working in<br />
partnership with many organisations, not just locally but<br />
also on a global level.<br />
In terms of the people they started working with; they helped<br />
to get them into mainstream society by working on the<br />
In terms of training projects, they enabled the community<br />
to design a training programme for the Metropolitan Police<br />
and LPT. More than 200 people had been trained through<br />
the programme.<br />
He then spoke about the PALM project, which he said was<br />
an extension of the SEED and PROSEED projects, looking<br />
at Terrorism Act related offenders, identified radicals and<br />
vulnerable individuals. They received referrals from<br />
agencies such as probation, police, and social services.<br />
Questions from the floor:<br />
Q1. Is there broad support from mosques for co-operating<br />
in this nature?<br />
AH: As far as we are concerned we get tremendous support<br />
from the mosques. We did not have any opposition from<br />
the mosques, because we had the mosque leadership on<br />
board.<br />
He said we could distinguish between processes of deradicalisation.<br />
Sometimes we were talking about programmes targeting<br />
a specific community, like a prison community, sometimes<br />
we were targeting individuals.<br />
Academics were very keen on words and on concepts.<br />
Comprehensive de-radicalisation usually involved types<br />
of de-radicalisation process ideological + behavioural +<br />
organisational.<br />
He tended to assess the programmes in six crucial<br />
characteristics. One was comprehensiveness, also how<br />
sensitive is it and respectful of social political conscience<br />
of the country in question. The assessment was how many<br />
people had graduated from the programme.<br />
He spoke about the causes of successful de-radicalisation<br />
processes:<br />
Leadership matters (spiritual v organisational);<br />
State pressures (multiple effects);<br />
Social inducement (internal and external);<br />
Selective inducements (impact of micro-politics).<br />
The common dimensions of the narrative of violent<br />
groups:<br />
Political;<br />
Historical;<br />
Instrumental;<br />
Socio-Psychological;<br />
Religious/Theological.<br />
Fuad Nahdi said he had been a journalist for most of his<br />
adult life so he understood and appreciated the power of<br />
words, terminologies and ideologies, but such a discussion<br />
could be taken out of context.<br />
Any strategy must have some ground rules. This should<br />
involve respect and the ability to listen and empathise and<br />
to seek convergence not conversion.<br />
Over the last four years Radical Middle Way has held 180<br />
meetings across the country, from one to one meetings,<br />
to events that 10,000 people visited. They have visited 34<br />
countries.<br />
He believed, he said, that there was nothing out there which<br />
we could not deal with but it was the attitude, the approach<br />
and the language that we used which was important.<br />
He said the most vulnerable people also happened to be the<br />
most dynamic elements of the community. It was important<br />
not to have fear but to have the courage to confront them,<br />
but by respecting them.<br />
He said we could not answer all the questions, but we could<br />
put a narrative about what it meant. He said we were going<br />
to get the kind of Muslim in this country that we invested in.<br />
The British Muslim identity in this country was critical.<br />
He said the big issue was that most Muslim young people<br />
wanted to be treated with respect. They wanted an approach<br />
that respected their views.<br />
12 13
Analysis of research from the European Commission projects Reducing<br />
Influences that Radicalise Prisoners and Towards Preventing Violent<br />
Radicalisation<br />
Talal Rajab, The Quilliam Foundation<br />
Alyas Karmani, Co-Director of STREET<br />
Talal Rajab said Quilliam was a counter extremist think<br />
tank based in <strong>London</strong> challenging Islamist and far right<br />
extremism.<br />
There was a lot of debate, he said, about what radicalisation<br />
was and terminology around this agenda. It was important<br />
to try find out what is this ideology and the main foundations<br />
that were driving it.<br />
He spoke about work his organisation had developed<br />
regarding four basic foundations that he said drove this<br />
ideology.<br />
He said the first was that violent extremists did not view<br />
Islam as a religion. If you looked at a lot of violent extremist<br />
groups and the way they described Islam, they would not<br />
compare it to Christianity or Judaism, they would say it<br />
was a political ideology; they would rather compare it to<br />
ideologies such as capitalism, socialism or communism.<br />
He said this was one of the key foundations of the ideology<br />
of Islamism and that it differed from what the main followers<br />
of Islam believed.<br />
The second foundation of this ideology was the belief that<br />
political sovereignty lay with God and that Sharia had to be<br />
implemented as state law in society. They believed it was<br />
forbidden for Muslims to follow man-made law. That differed<br />
from what mainstream Muslims believed in. These have<br />
political objectives with a political purpose, not religious,<br />
he said.<br />
The third foundation was that Muslims around the world<br />
represented one body with one leadership. No country in<br />
the world, in their eyes, was implementing state law at an<br />
Islamic level or uniting Islam under one leadership.<br />
The last foundation was the ultimate objectives of groups<br />
like Al-Qaeda. That was the re-establishment of an Islamic<br />
faith that could unite all Muslims around the world by<br />
force.<br />
He said he wanted to look at how this ideology manifested<br />
itself in a prison environment. He had tried to break it down<br />
to three push and pull factors.<br />
He said one of the reasons why this ideology had resonance<br />
with second and third generation British Muslims was<br />
because many were facing an identity crisis in their lives.<br />
This was not something that was just specific to Muslim<br />
communities, he said, but when you had an ideology that<br />
put society into two camps Muslim and non-Muslim, this<br />
made it more pertinent than it seemed.<br />
He said that research had shown that when people went<br />
into prison they found a new identity. Some found religion,<br />
for others they liked to identify with people who looked like<br />
them and shared similar experiences.<br />
He said the second pull factor to this ideology was<br />
grievances. They (extremist groups) used grievances to<br />
draw people to their ideology. When it came to the prison<br />
environment these grievances were more acute.<br />
He said that recommendations advocated by Quilliam<br />
included:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Looking at a counter narrative to stem the tide of people<br />
being driven into ideology - for example, to be working<br />
with people who had the authority to make judgements<br />
on Islam to help produce a counter-narrative;<br />
De-radicalisation Centres units where people<br />
convicted of terrorism could be rehabilitated;<br />
Address the grievances that pulled people into the<br />
ideology - policy makers should look at the grievances<br />
and where they had been real, seek to address them;<br />
Work with individuals once they had come out of prison<br />
and offer some sort of mentoring scheme to help them<br />
on the path away from ideology;<br />
Look to decrease tensions between Muslim and non-<br />
Muslim prisoners.<br />
Following Talal Rajabs input a debate took place regarding<br />
Islamist ideology.<br />
Alyas Karmani spoke about research he had done in<br />
2008/09. He explained that he worked for one of the<br />
community support agencies involved in working with TACT<br />
(Terrorist Act) and high risk Muslim offenders. He said they<br />
were using a model which took into account social factors,<br />
emotional, physical factors, and bringing together partners<br />
from that field to work together.<br />
He said the more perspectives that we brought into the<br />
debate the broader our view became.<br />
Language was very powerful and we should be very<br />
careful about the language used. Language translated<br />
into process as well. Some of the language used was very<br />
dehumanising.<br />
As part of the research they spoke to Muslim TACT<br />
offenders and began with a small sample of 12 individuals,<br />
subsequent to that they worked with about 20-30 individuals.<br />
They also worked with offender managers and interviewed<br />
community support agencies.<br />
The offender managers all identified this as a new area of<br />
supervision. They hadnt worked with offenders before who<br />
were of religious motivation in terms of their offence. Many<br />
of whom hadnt offended before.<br />
They identified there was a whole range of challenges<br />
relating to the high risk associated with offenders, a lack<br />
of awareness of the issues related to Islam and Islamic<br />
extremism and the complex nature of the issues, the<br />
multiplicity of the agencies involved in the cases and a lack<br />
of clarity in terms of where to get guidance and support.<br />
He said that 18 months on, a lot of offender managers he<br />
had been working with had got a lot better and a baseline<br />
support.<br />
14 15<br />
In terms of community support agencies, they identified<br />
this was a new area of work for the criminal justice sector<br />
and that there were few comparisons with other types of<br />
offending behaviour.<br />
Many of the aspects of the support, rehabilitations and<br />
supervision of Muslim offenders was different and not fully<br />
understood by non-Muslim workers.<br />
The other challenge was individuals in terms of the<br />
assessment models; they did not really fit with this area of<br />
work either. There was a sense of a lack of confidence and<br />
a lack of control in relation to supervision.<br />
He spoke about supervision styles and their impact on<br />
offenders - an open style of supervision that developed<br />
rapport and understanding contrasting with a closed style.<br />
He spoke about influencer factors and said that during the<br />
work they identified five broad factors and approximately<br />
60 sub-factors.<br />
A lot of offender managers aspired to use an open style,<br />
but still the awareness was not there in terms of what the<br />
influencer factors were.<br />
Due to this being a very challenging area people became<br />
overly sensitive and there was a sense of not feeling in<br />
control of the situation and perhaps being potentially<br />
manipulated by the offender, because they were in control<br />
and being misdirected.<br />
He asked - What do we mean by radicalisation? Young people<br />
experimented, explored different world views, different<br />
media and they found in that process of experimentation<br />
young Muslims become much more observant in terms of<br />
faith as well. He said we needed to be discerning enough<br />
to recognise the difference between someone who had<br />
been an observant Muslim and someone who saw Islam<br />
as a legitimate route to violence.<br />
He said that in relation to pre-arrest, one of the clear factors<br />
from the research was that all the individuals were unique<br />
in terms of their experiences. Some were graduates, some<br />
hadnt done well at school, all had a different experience<br />
in terms of how they were radicalised. The experience of<br />
arrest and detention in each case was very complex in its<br />
own right.<br />
However, they had identified that pre-arrest there had been<br />
a series of critical incidents in which the individuals started<br />
to look at the world with a very different perspective.<br />
They came across a whole range of experiences in terms<br />
of arrest and detention. Some individuals had never been
in prison before and found it very difficult to cope. Some<br />
came out of prison quite resilient and others came out very<br />
damaged, very broken and even more vulnerable.<br />
One of the recommendations they made for first time young<br />
offenders was to manage that process when they first went<br />
into prison.<br />
In terms of supervision, core to the relationship-building<br />
process was trying to develop a mutual understanding and<br />
open communication.<br />
He said the Core Influencer Factors were:<br />
1. Emotional well-being<br />
2. Social exclusion and estrangement factors<br />
3. Perceived injustice and grievance<br />
4. Foreign policy<br />
5. Extremist ideology<br />
They developed a risk assessment framework which had<br />
gone into informing the Probation Service.<br />
He spoke of Deradicalisation Interventions:<br />
1. Emotional well-being and support<br />
2. Re-integration<br />
3. Breaking down us and them<br />
4. Theological Resilience<br />
5. Justifiable Cause<br />
6. Mentoring<br />
7. Alternative Narrative<br />
8. Compassionate re-integration<br />
9. Safe space open discussions<br />
He said it was about tailoring the package of interventions<br />
by doing robust assessment and in that assessment<br />
process looking at things from a range of perspectives.<br />
Linda Pizani Williams, European Institute<br />
of Social Services and Dr Harald<br />
Weilnbock, Violence Prevention Network<br />
and Professor at the University of Zurich<br />
They spoke about research they had conducted. Their<br />
objectives were to do a comparative analysis from the two<br />
intervention methods (from the UK and Germany) and<br />
identify which had a positive impact, what practitioner skills<br />
were needed, what underlying knowledge was required,<br />
what the risk management issues were and how success<br />
was measured.<br />
They were also interested in the theoretical basis of<br />
interventions.<br />
There were some basic differences between the two<br />
methods, but the similarities surprised them.<br />
They said the basic differences were critical. <strong>London</strong><br />
Probation Trust was concerned with individual offenders<br />
released on licence. They were very challenging, high<br />
risk, high profile offenders and the researchers had to<br />
remember that in the UK the counter terrorism legislation<br />
was particularly stringent. It criminalised activities that<br />
were not necessarily criminalised in other countries.<br />
Supervision was shared with statutory agencies and the<br />
Muslim community organisations who had credibility with<br />
offenders.<br />
They said the work in Germany was conducted in prison<br />
and post-release. They worked in group sessions in<br />
prisons and afterwards were able to do post release work<br />
with individuals. They thought linking the work in prisons<br />
and afterwards had been key to the success of the model.<br />
VPN have always worked with right wing offenders and in<br />
the last two years had started to work with offenders from<br />
a minority background.<br />
In terms of the findings, the similarities also took the<br />
researchers by surprise, bearing in mind the different<br />
methods being used.<br />
The relationship with the offender was absolutely crucial. It<br />
had to be based on trust and the offender needed to see<br />
they were being treated with respect. This had an enormous<br />
impact on their willingness to engage with the process.<br />
Findings basic similarities<br />
1.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.<br />
5.<br />
6.<br />
Therapeutic relationship based on trust and mutual<br />
respect<br />
Intellectual, cultural and emotional approach<br />
Challenges learned, narratives/memories<br />
Institutional independence<br />
Re-socialising key competencies<br />
Importance of family work<br />
The purpose of the research was to get an idea of the<br />
implications for partners and this was to identify appropriate<br />
models of intervention. The same model would not work for<br />
everyone.<br />
The personal qualities of the practitioners and facilitators<br />
were critical.<br />
Implications for practice<br />
Appropriate model of intervention<br />
Personal qualities of practitioners/facilitators<br />
Professional skills<br />
Knowledge and expertise<br />
Techniques<br />
Robust risk assessment<br />
What next:<br />
Management issues<br />
How to work with and through other organisations<br />
What do offender managers need?<br />
What do community facilitators need?<br />
What are the training needs for all stakeholders?<br />
This session finished with a focus group exercise, in which delegates were asked to list ideas for organisational issues,<br />
inter-agency issues, offender management issues and practitioner issues. These ideas would help as a deliverable for<br />
the project.<br />
1.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.<br />
5.<br />
6.<br />
1.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.<br />
5.<br />
16 17
Making Good: Lessons from the Social Psychology of Desistance and Role<br />
Exit for Intervention Projects<br />
What We Can Learn from Working with Hate Crime Offenders and Right Wing<br />
Extremists<br />
Professor Shadd Maruna, Director of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice,<br />
School of Law, Queens University Belfast<br />
Robert Orell, Director of Exit Sweden<br />
Professor Maruna spoke about how aspects of<br />
personalities changed over time. Personality traits such as<br />
aggressiveness and impulsivity probably stayed consistent<br />
over a life course, but what changed over time was our<br />
narrative identity, which was also a key aspect of our<br />
personality.<br />
The difference with extremist crimes was that even the<br />
crime itself was a form of communication. The activities<br />
continued a kind of narrative that got picked up by others.<br />
His research, for the most part, could be found in the book<br />
Making Good based on the Liverpool Desistance Study. He<br />
wanted to study what it was that made offenders different<br />
from non-offenders. The research looked at desisting exoffenders<br />
and active offenders.<br />
They looked at Condemnation Scripts (active offenders)<br />
versus Redemption Scripts (desisting group).<br />
The active offenders condemnation script was:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Pessimistic views of life chances;<br />
See no real choices for them;<br />
View future as outside their control;<br />
Perceived the world in deterministic (almost mechanical)<br />
ways.<br />
He spoke about a narrative based exit strategy:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Rejecting past behaviours without rejecting of whole<br />
self (maintaining identity of a good person who did<br />
wrong things);<br />
Exit with dignity;<br />
Change with continuity.<br />
The core elements of the redemption script were:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The establishment of a good core self involving a set<br />
of consistent moral values;<br />
The desire to draw on experiences to give something<br />
back for next generation;<br />
Beating the System as they join it.<br />
He also spoke briefly about the design of the new Making<br />
Good Initiative, a small-scale resettlement project for a<br />
group of Loyalist-affiliated prisoners in separate housing<br />
conditions in Maghaberry Prison, Northern Ireland, being<br />
facilitated by a group of community work specialists from<br />
the University of Ulster. The key elements of the Initiative,<br />
which draws on Marunas Making Good research,<br />
include: exploring the past, in order to write a new future,<br />
downloading and deconstructing past identities, then rebiographing<br />
the past for a better future.<br />
Robert Orell explained that Exit was a non-governmental<br />
organisation working with people who wanted to leave<br />
the White Power Movement. They took a very individual<br />
approach and worked with the parents and families of<br />
activists to support them in what it meant to have a son or<br />
daughter who was an active neo-Nazi. They also provided<br />
counselling and education for prisoners on how to leave<br />
these kinds of groups.<br />
He spoke about his own life experiences. He was 30<br />
years old and grew up in Stockholm. He had had a good<br />
childhood, but things changed when he began to get low<br />
grades during school and not succeeding in tests affected<br />
him. He had to re-sit a year which he said, for him, was a<br />
major trauma.<br />
He realised that he was not good at school, but he could<br />
still have an identity by being a bully. During a three week<br />
educational trip he met some older Swedish boys who<br />
were football supporters. He went with them to a football<br />
match, which was a massive experience for him, to be part<br />
of a mass of 3000 people. He was a very angry young man<br />
and in the supporters groups he could take his anger and<br />
point it somewhere. He completely got into football; it gave<br />
him a meaning, an identity and a feeling of being part of<br />
a gang.<br />
In that supporters group there was also a lot of tendency to<br />
xenophobia and white power groups.<br />
This all brought him into contact with the white power<br />
movement.<br />
He started to read the literature of the movement, which<br />
made him a lot more radicalised. During that time he was<br />
hanging out with a gang of football supporters and neo-<br />
Nazis; there was a lot of drinking, fighting and bad living.<br />
18 19<br />
After a year or two he stopped drinking, started taking<br />
physical exercise, and doing a lot more reading. He started<br />
to think about his friends; they were supposed to be the<br />
elite, but they were drinking five days a week and not doing<br />
much exercise. He started to think that something was<br />
wrong with the situation.<br />
When he was 18 he started military service. This was one<br />
of the absolute turning points because he was good at it;<br />
he liked the system of hierarchy. However, he had a police<br />
record for neo-Nazi activities, which meant that he was not<br />
allowed to have a gun in the military service training. For<br />
the last four months of his military service he had to take<br />
care of a boat and live alone on it. This meant he had a lot<br />
of time on his own to think and to reflect on what he wanted<br />
to do with his life.<br />
During the summer he made contact with Exit. The most<br />
important thing was that he could talk to somebody who<br />
had had a similar experience, who fully understood what<br />
he was going through. When he finished his military service<br />
he began helping out at Exit and in January 2000 became<br />
employed there. Three years ago he became a director of<br />
Exit.<br />
Questions from the floor<br />
Q1. A delegate said they worked with TACT offenders in<br />
the UK and one of the common things they often found in<br />
their backgrounds was that they had a poor relationship<br />
with their father - Can you identify with that from your own<br />
perspective and from the work you do with other boys going<br />
through this process?<br />
RO said he had good contact with his father, so he wouldnt<br />
say that was a lack of a role model for him and he wouldnt<br />
be so sure how often that would be one of the issues for<br />
Exits clients. He was sure it would be one issue, but not<br />
for all.<br />
Q2. What was it about the four months on the boat that was<br />
significant?<br />
RO said he thought it was the first time in his life that he<br />
had had a dialogue with himself Who am I? Where am I<br />
going? What have I done? It was the first time he had ever<br />
sat down and reflected on the movement.<br />
Q3. A delegate asked when RO was speaking to clients,<br />
which part of his own history caught on best?<br />
RO said what clients mostly got attuned to was the<br />
process of being radicalised, how he first got in contact,<br />
who contacted him, how it changed him. He said this<br />
was probably because the clients could identify with this<br />
themselves.
Linking Operational Needs and the Evidence Base<br />
Judy Korn, Director of the Violence<br />
Prevention Network<br />
Al Reid, Head of Dangerous Offenders<br />
Section, NOMS<br />
Judy Korn spoke about her work with VPN. They started<br />
their work in 2001 with violent juveniles from right wing<br />
extremists in prisons and transferred the model to offenders<br />
with a migrant background from Muslim communities.<br />
What was interesting, she said, was that they found more<br />
similarities than differences and that the same techniques<br />
could be used.<br />
There were two main differences. One was that after about<br />
two years of doing the training programmes with the young<br />
Muslims they decided to integrate religious authorities on<br />
their team of trainers, because for the trainers to talk with<br />
the young people about their interpretation of the Koran<br />
without having experience of interpreting the Koran was not<br />
possible. So they trained two Imams to become trainers on<br />
their programme.<br />
Secondly, they changed their work with the families and<br />
communities of these offenders. In the group of young<br />
migrants with a Muslim background, the families and<br />
communities were much more powerful than right wing<br />
extremist offenders so they had to integrate them much<br />
earlier, find out who the positive supporters were and who<br />
could be integrated into the training process in prisons to<br />
prepare for release, so they would get positive support and<br />
not be at risk of being exploited by extremist groups.<br />
Al Reid said just over two and a half years ago NOMS<br />
committed to doing some work on interventions with<br />
extremist offenders and those convicted of offences related<br />
to terrorism.<br />
When the work began it was a new direction for NOMS to<br />
consider intervening and working with terrorist offenders<br />
in the way that has now been done, especially in the<br />
community.<br />
During the work they quite quickly recognised that<br />
offender managers working in the community were already<br />
intervening in some way with these offenders. They were<br />
doing the best they could with limited knowledge and<br />
so NOMS had to respond to that in a way that provided<br />
them with support and guidance, whilst at the same time<br />
recognising everyone was learning as they were going.<br />
Workshops were organised for offender managers who<br />
were supervising the cases. A national training package<br />
was also developed with colleagues in the Home Office,<br />
which was aimed at awareness-raising for all staff and<br />
case work advice and guidance was made available on an<br />
individual basis for offender managers.<br />
Just as important as the training was a training needs<br />
analysis to see what gaps existed for staff in terms of<br />
knowledge and skills and how those gaps could be filled<br />
effectively.<br />
A lot of work was put into improving information sharing<br />
between agencies.<br />
In terms of the challenges, they were dealing with a small<br />
number of individuals, but there was the potential for highlevel<br />
risk and they needed to protect against that.<br />
He said that above all, at the centre, they must enable<br />
frontline staff to do their jobs effectively, providing the<br />
right level of guidance and support and ensuring working<br />
relationships facilitated effective delivery.<br />
Sarah Marsden spoke about research she was conducting<br />
with Simon Cornwall from the Central Extremism Unit<br />
(CEU) at LPT, which aimed to understand the outcomes of<br />
the process the CEU does with terrorism offenders, based<br />
on interviews with offender managers. She was six months<br />
into the one year project and so was not in a position to<br />
give any definitive results, but she could give an idea of<br />
where the research was going.<br />
She said they wanted to understand the processes and<br />
the outcomes and they also needed to monitor progress.<br />
Importantly, the research needed to assist decision making,<br />
to be helpful and practical and to inform programme<br />
development and implementation.<br />
She said each person had different paths in and out of<br />
radicalisation. This was compounded by a high level of risk;<br />
the consequences of making a mistake were severe. The<br />
nature of risk changed over time and with the individual.<br />
She spoke about theoretical approaches. In trying to<br />
understand how we might reduce re-offending she spoke<br />
about the Risk Needs Responsibility Model and said that<br />
alongside that was the Good Lives Model, which aimed to<br />
encourage desistance from crime rather than reduce risk.<br />
The two models had traditionally been put in opposition<br />
although it was now understood both could help improve<br />
our understanding of how to deal with these types of<br />
offences.<br />
She spoke about Multi-Attribute Utility Technology (MAUT)<br />
based on five main principles; to identify what was the<br />
effectiveness of the CEU; to identify stakeholders; to ask<br />
those stakeholders what they believed the attributes of the<br />
programme were and; to identify the real importance of the<br />
attributes.<br />
She said that effective evaluation was possible. but we<br />
should go slowly and carefully. A long-term view was required<br />
with TACT offenders who were often on long licences and<br />
long sentences. We needed to ensure evaluation was built<br />
into programme design.<br />
20 21
Front Line Experiences: Working with Violent Extremist Offenders in Prison<br />
and the Community<br />
Simon Cornwall, Central Extremism Unit, <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
Phil Wragg, Governor of HMP Belmarsh High Security Estate<br />
Simon Cornwall said that in 2006 the Home Office produced<br />
documentation for Parliament called Contest, which had<br />
been the strategy for counter terrorism for the UK in four<br />
aspects:<br />
Prevent;<br />
Pursue;<br />
Protect;<br />
Prepare.<br />
The probation services main goal was through Prevent.<br />
He said LPT was a key stakeholder on the agenda and the<br />
role of MAPPA was very important.<br />
In July 2008 LPT wrote a report on the need to work with<br />
this type of offender and to identify gaps in service delivery<br />
and deliver best practice. The primary objective for LPT<br />
was to build its capacity to meet demand and it started to<br />
introduce the Central Extremism Unit (CEU).<br />
The objectives were to:<br />
<br />
<br />
Co-ordinate LPT activity, to have a central place where<br />
people could get information and where other agencies<br />
could get information about offenders;<br />
Provide a consistent capability to LPT to support the<br />
work of offender managers.<br />
Guidance and training was developed for operational staff<br />
and, working with NOMS, an assessment framework was<br />
developed.<br />
One of the most important jobs was to develop community<br />
links with third sector organisations, which could support<br />
the work they were doing.<br />
By June 2009 the unit was up and running with four staff.<br />
The main tasks identified were to set up a database<br />
tracking all TACT offenders. This was done nationally and<br />
also in <strong>London</strong>, so offender managers and other agencies<br />
could find out where individuals were in the criminal justice<br />
system.<br />
He said MAPPA (Multi Agency Public Protection<br />
Arrangements) were a very important part of the work they<br />
did.<br />
Sourcing and managing interventions had also been very<br />
important. They currently worked with about eight highly<br />
skilled, very motivated groups.<br />
Sharing of information had been a constant issue. This had<br />
now improved.<br />
The first year was spent building links and sharing<br />
information with police and prisons.<br />
In the second year the work expanded to take in other<br />
extremist offenders and those who had an ideological or<br />
political agenda. They supported the work of nine offender<br />
managers working with offenders not convicted of TACT<br />
offences, but who were vulnerable and showing signs of<br />
being ideologically driven.<br />
They have delivered six three-day training events to nearly<br />
100 offender managers and offender supervisors from<br />
within prisons, which had been very successful.<br />
They had also held practitioner forums, where offender<br />
managers could get together and talk about what they had<br />
been doing, the negatives and positives, so that they could<br />
learn from each others experiences.<br />
Phil Wragg said that after The <strong>London</strong> bombings, on 7th<br />
July 2005,(7/7) Belmarsh received a new type of prisoner<br />
who was willing to use suicide tactics.<br />
He said the initial thoughts were around how they could<br />
deal with the exceptional risk - these people were to be<br />
considered as exceptional risk Category A and provided<br />
with the highest level of security.<br />
Staff tension and absenteeism rose because staff were<br />
worried about who and what they were dealing with. Stress<br />
levels among staff spiralled upwards and it was very clear<br />
that their understanding of Islam was limited, but that it was<br />
being influenced by the media coverage.<br />
The management of that anxiety was a massive challenge.<br />
There was a plethora of security reports being submitted<br />
by staff on a daily basis, because people were reporting<br />
things they thought were occurring rather than were<br />
actually occurring.<br />
He spoke about how the situation had evolved.<br />
More prisoners were being sent to custody who had a terror<br />
tag related to them. They were unable to keep up with the<br />
level of resource that they thought was required, because<br />
of the number of prisoners coming in.<br />
The media and the political interest remained at fever<br />
pitch.<br />
However, the management team grew more comfortable<br />
with decisions and that allowed them to get into a defensible<br />
decision making position. They began to believe in what<br />
they were doing and therefore able to defend themselves.<br />
Staff training became a priority. It was clear staff did not<br />
know about the Islamic faith, they didnt know how people<br />
practised their faith.<br />
The Imam in the establishment was pivotal in guiding and<br />
smoothing relations. He was able to confirm to staff and<br />
management what was right, wrong and inappropriate.<br />
It was important that the offenders who wanted to practice<br />
their faith could see that all faiths were treated equally.<br />
Much of what had been done at Belmarsh and in the<br />
prison service would not have been possible without joint<br />
working.<br />
He said that for the future it was about normalising the<br />
perceived threat posed by extremist prisoners and applying<br />
existing policies robustly.<br />
He said that confidence in the policy and support from both<br />
the centre and ministers was crucial to empower people<br />
like him to manage effectively.<br />
Staff training and engagement was absolutely imperative<br />
and remained so.<br />
22 23
Judith Hooper, Camden Public Protection Unit, <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust and Delroy<br />
Williams, Probation Officer, <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
Psychologist, Penitentiary Institution of Alama, SGIP<br />
It was said that at the end of 2007 they<br />
had seven inmates connected to the bombings in 2004. It<br />
was the first time the prison had had this profile of inmate<br />
so initially they were in an isolation unit. They were kept in<br />
individual cells and couldn t take part in any kind of activity.<br />
Their daily life was four hours in the yard and the rest of the<br />
time in the cell.<br />
Then the prison created a programme of multi-cultural<br />
integration. The therapy sessions were in groups and the<br />
inmates voluntarily signed up to it.<br />
Group sessions were held two hours a week but there were<br />
also individual sessions with each inmate and in that time<br />
they discussed political and religious ideology and debates<br />
discussing tolerance, co-existence and integration.<br />
and they had the opportunity of taking part in activities not<br />
just in the module but also outside the module.<br />
On a personal level they found that they could take part<br />
in activities provided by the prison, they could have more<br />
social relationships and their relationship with the staff<br />
improved considerably.<br />
This had all taken place within three years of working.<br />
Changes did not take place immediately. She said the<br />
main aim was multi-cultural integration and, through their<br />
experiences over the three years, they had realised it was<br />
very important to take an active part, rather than being<br />
passive.<br />
Judith Hooper explained they had been working with this<br />
group of offenders for around two years. As probation<br />
officers their primary objective was public protection,<br />
in order to do that they had to be able to conduct risk<br />
assessments and risk management plans.<br />
Delroy Williams gave case studies on four offenders they<br />
were working with.<br />
He explained how they first came into contact and explained<br />
that probation could submit pre-sentence reports about an<br />
offender and make a sentence report recommendation.<br />
Six months before an offender was released from prison<br />
they arranged a MAPPA meeting to formulate a risk<br />
management plan. They used licence conditions to mitigate<br />
risks such as residence, curfew and not being allowed to<br />
apply for travel documents.<br />
Judith said the most important things when they started<br />
working with the offenders were:<br />
Knowledge of the offence;<br />
Making relationships with the family and significant<br />
others;<br />
Previous criminality;<br />
The place of Islam/religion in their life;<br />
The relationship with Probation.<br />
They needed to create a legitimate relationship with<br />
the people they worked with. This was not necessarily<br />
consequence free; there had to be clear boundaries and<br />
expectations.<br />
In the cases they had supervised they had co-worked<br />
together. It was important to balance the ethnicity, age and<br />
gender of people working together.<br />
By co-working you were able to provide continuity in<br />
relationships, for example if one was on leave there was<br />
always someone there who was recognisable to the<br />
offender.<br />
How to create a legitimate relationship:<br />
Co-working;<br />
Create a safe environment to talk about politics and<br />
religion;<br />
Amman message;<br />
Doha Debates;<br />
Books;<br />
Newspapers;<br />
Current affairs;<br />
History of certain areas;<br />
Knowledge of culture;<br />
Common sense approach;<br />
Do not label;<br />
Use third parties;<br />
Time;<br />
Offer choices;<br />
Questions from the floor:<br />
Q1. A delegate asked about the fact that the probation<br />
officers had to write reports and that the offender knew this.<br />
Did this create a difficulty in the relationship approach?<br />
Judith said they were very transparent about what they did.<br />
When they did assessments on offenders they told them<br />
what they were and why they did them. She added that<br />
it was incredibly important not to be secretive about what<br />
they did.<br />
Delroy added that the offender had the chance to see the<br />
report, so everything that they put in the report they needed<br />
to be able to justify.<br />
They weren t trying to convince the inmates of certain<br />
values and they did not want to impose any ideology on<br />
them - firstly because it was not ethical and secondly<br />
because it was not effective either.<br />
The idea of the programme was to defend the intrinsic<br />
values that had to be supported by every individual, such<br />
as taking other people and their opinions into account.<br />
During the programme they saw changes in attitudes.<br />
There were high levels of interest to take part in these<br />
programmes.<br />
They examined their situation again and tried to integrate<br />
them with the other inmates within their unit, to increase<br />
the places where they could have their activities and to<br />
decrease the amount of time they spent in their cells.<br />
A further programme took place, which the inmates<br />
again signed up for voluntarily. The programme included<br />
sessions with 10 inmates, not just by themselves but other<br />
inmates as well. They could take part in a bigger number<br />
of activities. They wanted them to understand the role<br />
that thoughts played and that they had an effect on our<br />
feelings and behaviour. They also wanted to help them to<br />
recognise and stress emotions and to recognise them not<br />
just in themselves but also in others and be able to discuss<br />
them.<br />
Finally they had a module which aimed to help the inmates<br />
to establish healthy habits.<br />
Their behaviour improved amazingly and the prison decided<br />
to go a step further. They decided to integrate them in a<br />
bigger group of inmates which meant they were going to<br />
have a normal regime.<br />
The inmates had to voluntarily sign a behaviour contract<br />
24 25
Future Cooperation: Creating Sustainable Partnerships and Networks<br />
Closing Remarks<br />
Steve Pitts, Head of NOMS International<br />
Relations and External Programmes<br />
Linda Pizani-Williams<br />
Linda Pizani-Williams delivered the findings from the table<br />
top exercise done the previous day, where delegates were<br />
asked to give ideas for organisational issues, interagency<br />
issues, offender manager issues and practitioner issues.<br />
Issues to be tackled<br />
Practitioner:<br />
Knowledge, skills and confidence;<br />
Risk assessment;<br />
Offender manager relationship engagement skills.<br />
Interagency<br />
Steve Pitts explained the role of his team was to identify<br />
opportunities to learn from each other, within the UK across<br />
sectors, and also opportunities to learn internationally. It<br />
was also about looking for external funding to support that<br />
learning and to use the funding for projects such as RIRP<br />
and TPVR to be able to put on conferences such as this<br />
one.<br />
Prison and probation had not, in his view, been sufficiently<br />
high priority on EC funding priority lists and they were<br />
working to improve that.<br />
He spoke of the European funding programme and different<br />
grants and funding streams available.<br />
He said in terms of accessing funds:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Start with the needs, not with the funding stream;<br />
Select the right partners;<br />
Competitive need bid writing and project management<br />
expertise;<br />
Networks can help identify policy needs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Clear definition of roles, responsibilities and skills;<br />
Transparency;<br />
Working with not against each other;<br />
Shared protocols and knowledge base;<br />
Information sharing;<br />
Risk ownership;<br />
Outcome measures.<br />
Offender Manager<br />
<br />
<br />
Development of a tool kit;<br />
Specialist knowledge.<br />
Areas for future cooperation<br />
This session concluded with an exercise for each table to<br />
discuss priority areas for co-operation for the future:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Exchange of best practice;<br />
Find out what works;<br />
User voice;<br />
Evidence base of theoretical models;<br />
Models of inter-agency co-operation for risk assessment<br />
and joint management and training;<br />
Clarity of terminology, communication and<br />
documentation and evidence base;<br />
Multi-agency training to support collaboration;<br />
To share what does not work;<br />
Staff exchanges and work shadowing;<br />
Better understanding of push and pull factors across<br />
different extremism pathways;<br />
Richard Pickering said there had been a range of agencies,<br />
groups and partners at the conference. It had been a<br />
stimulating series of conversations and he hoped that<br />
individually and collectively, delegates had got what they<br />
wanted from those conversations.<br />
He said it had been challenging. We had looked at issues<br />
of risk, evidence base, mainstreaming. We had spoken of<br />
the fragility and vulnerability of this work, the difficulties in<br />
accessing funding, the difficulties of describing this work in<br />
a changing political environment and the challenges were<br />
clear.<br />
He thanked the practitioners of the projects involved, the<br />
speakers, and the venue and expressed his gratitude to<br />
the project team for their hard work.<br />
Stephen Moran said we had got through a huge amount<br />
of work in three days. The conference had highlighted the<br />
real benefits of working internationally and the opportunity<br />
for networking. He said he had been very impressed by<br />
the positive, enthusiastic contributions from speakers and<br />
delegates and the passion they had for working to prevent<br />
radicalisation.<br />
He extended his thanks to the organising team who he said<br />
had done a fantastic job.<br />
He said he was the chair of the TPVR and RIRP project<br />
boards and he was very grateful to the project board<br />
members for their contributions. The final project board<br />
meetings had been arranged for December and it had<br />
been agreed that these meetings would take the form of<br />
evaluation days, in order to review the projects as a whole<br />
and to pick up on the points raised at the conference, to<br />
take them forward.<br />
26 27
Workshop 1 Multi agency approaches to working with violent extremists<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Chaired by Al Reid, Head of Dangerous Offenders<br />
Section, NOMS<br />
Ian Collins, Detective Sergeant, Metropolitan Police<br />
Simon Cornwall, Central Extremism Unit, <strong>London</strong><br />
Probation Trust<br />
Touda El Ouargui, Security Adviser, Denmark<br />
In this workshop there were three presentations focusing in<br />
particular on the importance of multi-agency approaches to<br />
violent extremism and radicalisation as well as the problems,<br />
advantages and issues that might be encountered with this<br />
approach. The workshop also aimed to consider European<br />
approaches to multi-agency work.<br />
Touda El Ouargui from the Danish Security and Intelligence<br />
Service outlined the organisational and operational<br />
structures of the security service. She focused on the<br />
main partners that the organisation worked with as<br />
part of a multi-agency approach to preventing violent<br />
extremism and radicalisation. In particular the security<br />
service concentrated on engagement in seven key areas.<br />
These areas of engagement included schools and higher<br />
education; the prison and probation service; government<br />
ministries; faith communities; representatives from local<br />
communities; NGOs; and, bilateral contacts.<br />
Simon Cornwall from the Central Extremism Unit (CEU)<br />
from <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust spoke about the work of his<br />
unit developed in mid 2008 and focused on developing<br />
a comprehensive strategy for coordinating, tracking and<br />
managing terrorist offenders. The core objectives of the<br />
CEU were to coordinate LPTs activities and build a virtual<br />
team and intervention in each <strong>London</strong> Borough; to develop<br />
guidance and training for operational staff; to help develop<br />
assessment frameworks and interventions; to deliver<br />
objectives for the Officer for Security and Counter Terrorism<br />
and the <strong>London</strong> Director of Offender Management; and, to<br />
develop community links with third sector organisations.<br />
Detective Sergeant Ian Collins from the Metropolitan Police<br />
spoke about the prisoner release team, which is responsible<br />
for assisting LPT in the management of terrorist offenders<br />
and those convicted out of counter terrorism operations.<br />
The team managed those offenders subject to Notification<br />
Orders when the licence had expired and assisted LPT<br />
with intelligence sharing in relation to other offenders<br />
where appropriate.<br />
The Metropolitan Police was a responsible authority under<br />
the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA)<br />
and had a statutory duty to support the Probation Service<br />
in the management of dangerous offenders. The Prisoner<br />
Release Team worked closely with LPTs CEU. Excellent<br />
relationships had been developed between LPT and<br />
SO15 to enable the appropriate police support and flow of<br />
information between the agencies. The Prisoner Release<br />
Team had the following objectives to support MAPPA:<br />
Attend MAPPA pre-release meetings to;<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Provide an intelligence report;<br />
Provide guidance on proposed licence conditions;<br />
Assume ownership of actions to be undertaken by<br />
police;<br />
Assist in minimising the ability for offenders to re-offend,<br />
prevent vulnerability and support rehabilitation;<br />
Provide a bespoke police response regarding<br />
reoffending and licence breaches.<br />
The advantages of this were to provide an effective<br />
and immediate exchange of information; to provide an<br />
expedient police response when investigation was required;<br />
and to provide excellent police support for offenders by<br />
responding to Duty of Care issues. The disadvantages<br />
were to interpersonal relationships between agency<br />
employees; sharing information with non-vetted <strong>London</strong><br />
Probation Trust and Prison Service employees (Statutory<br />
obligations); and, sensitive operational information versus<br />
risk management.<br />
Questions<br />
Is there any national co-ordination of multi-agency cooperation?<br />
MAPPA arrangements are governed by national rules/<br />
regulations/guidance.<br />
LPT however, is unique in having a specialist probation unit<br />
- the CEU - due to the number of cases<br />
How do you compile a community risk assessment?<br />
IC -Two pilots are ongoing, one by NOMS and another by<br />
the MET - useful work is being undertaken.<br />
SC - while OASys is the risk main tool for probation use,<br />
NOMS is piloting a new risk assessment tool centrally<br />
for these offenders and if successful it will be rolled out<br />
nationally.<br />
UK release arrangements seem excellent - are they<br />
transferable systems and might they have lessons for other<br />
EU countries? & (2) - what are the re-conviction rates?<br />
(1) UK MAPPA arrangements and processes are obviously<br />
specific to our needs and situation though the principles<br />
and structure might be applicable. Information sharing is<br />
still an ongoing issue between agencies in these particular<br />
cases, but we have made great progress on this matter<br />
and will continue doing so.<br />
(2) No re-offending of TACT and TACT-related offenders<br />
on licence This is an indication of good multi-agency<br />
working, in addition to other factors. Of 12 offenders on<br />
licence, there has been no re-offending, although there<br />
has been a breach on one for non-compliance with their<br />
licence conditions.<br />
Where are the community groups in all of this?<br />
While they dont have a place at MAPPA as such, unless<br />
invited, their views and assessments of individuals are<br />
taken into account where relevant.<br />
SC & IC both stressed that they do not have the legitimacy<br />
to work with an offenders faith/belief aspects, but<br />
community groups and Imams do - so they have a key role<br />
in working with probation and prisons with regards to TACT<br />
offenders.<br />
28 29
Workshop 2<br />
Staff training for working with violent extremists and terrorist<br />
offenders<br />
Workshop 3 - Working with Community Organisations for Public Protection<br />
and Reintegration<br />
Chaired by Rosie Hanna, Head of NOMS Extremism<br />
Unit<br />
Maggie Bolger, Head of Curriculum Development ,<br />
NOMS<br />
Liz Dixon, Hate Crime Coordinator, <strong>London</strong> Probation<br />
Trust<br />
Head of Services for Intervention<br />
and Monitoring, Spanish Penitentiary Service<br />
The workshop aimed to discuss how organisations<br />
across Europe could identify staff training needs and outline<br />
how these needs could be met and training implemented.<br />
The workshop also focused on the similarity and differences<br />
concerning the needs of prison and probation staff.<br />
Maggie Bolger said NOMS had extensive experience in<br />
managing violent extremists and terrorist offenders. In 2008<br />
the NOMS Extremism Programme Board commissioned a<br />
TNA to identify staff awareness and confidence in handling/<br />
managing violent extremist prisoners. The findings<br />
demonstrated that staff had gaps in their knowledge of faith<br />
issues; that staff did not engage and communicate enough<br />
with prisoners; and that staff confidence was low and<br />
they were afraid to challenge offenders because of race,<br />
religion, and diversity issues. It was also found that prison<br />
staff had very different needs to that of probation staff and<br />
that overall a new approach was required to the one that<br />
had previously been used to handle IRA prisoners.<br />
When handling violent extremist and terrorist offenders it<br />
was found that the offenders often disrespected the prison<br />
Imam. They also had contempt and intolerance for other<br />
Muslim offenders who did not share in their interpretation<br />
of Islam, as well as all non Muslim prisoners. They were<br />
involved in bullying, intimidation and targeting of vulnerable<br />
prisoners and changed their appearance and held<br />
meetings with fellow offenders without permission. They<br />
also challenged staff and there was a noticeable increase<br />
in racial complaints and discipline issues.<br />
In response to these issues NOMS created an awareness<br />
training package for staff. An Expert Advisory Group was<br />
formed to assist in the development of this training package<br />
and in 2010 a qualitative and quantitative evaluation was<br />
undertaken. To date, approximately 5,000 staff had attended<br />
and feedback had been very positive.<br />
This programme had been extended to form part of the<br />
foundation training for new entrant prison officers. NOMS<br />
was also looking to establish joint training with prison and<br />
probation staff.<br />
Liz Dixon’s presentation focused on the work the LPT<br />
had undertaken. This began when probation staff working<br />
with offenders convicted under the Terrorism Act 2006<br />
requested help. These probation staff had to work with<br />
uncertain risks and new notions of risks. They had to<br />
familiarise themselves with new issues regarding violent<br />
extremism and the Criminal Justice System. They had to<br />
work with new legislation, licence conditions and policies,<br />
with new partners (such as the Office for Security and<br />
Counter Terrorism in the Home Office), and also with those<br />
who had been radicalised. Staff expressed an anxiety of<br />
feeling overwhelmed and nervous, especially as the issue<br />
of terrorism had high risk factors and a high media profile.<br />
They needed to develop confidence in a professional<br />
capacity over issues such as whether they should separate<br />
offenders or allow them access to interventions.<br />
LPT set up a practitioner forum and drew on frontline<br />
practitioners’ experiences. LPT also developed a great<br />
number of working relationships, commissioned research<br />
and drew on learning from previous work with hate crime<br />
offenders. This led to the development of a staff training<br />
programme, which is delivered to prison and probation<br />
staff.<br />
In his presentation it was highlighted that<br />
in Spain there was not a probation system as there was<br />
in the United Kingdom. There were currently 56 violent<br />
extremist and terrorist offenders held in Spanish prisons.<br />
All were foreign nationals who would be deported on<br />
completion of their sentence and so there was little work<br />
on how to reintegrate them into Spanish society. The focus<br />
of Spanish intervention programmes was to prevent the<br />
spread of radicalisation within the prison system. The issues<br />
presented by Islamist violence was a new phenomenon in<br />
Spain as the traditional challenge had come from extreme<br />
left wing groups and ETA.<br />
Spain had developed extensive training for the staff working<br />
with violent extremists and terrorists. These programmes<br />
were developed in 1989 and were originally geared towards<br />
handling ETA terrorists. These programmes were run by<br />
academics, with one of the key aims being to train prison<br />
staff to detect and counter the radicalisation process.<br />
Dealing with the problem of radicalisation was made all<br />
the harder in the immediate period after the March 2004<br />
bombings, as there was no legislation to convict terrorists<br />
for plotting or inciting violence. There was only legislation to<br />
deal with offenders who had already committed a terrorist<br />
act. This had now changed and 147 people were currently<br />
held who had been convicted of plots and incitement to<br />
violent terrorist acts. These offenders were spread across<br />
57 prisons and were put through intervention programmes.<br />
Seven different programmes were used, each of which<br />
lasted 30 hours. Since 2010 Spain had been forced to scale<br />
back these programmes due to budget cuts. In response<br />
they had moved staff between prisons to spread expert<br />
knowledge, as well as developing a staff training manual<br />
and an ‘open university’style course for staff.<br />
Chaired by Sara Robinson, Assistant Chief Officer (Central<br />
Extremism Unit), <strong>London</strong> Probation Trust<br />
Alyas Karmani, Director of STREET<br />
Leo Jansen, Dutch National Agency for Correctional<br />
Institutions<br />
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson, Director of SIRAAT<br />
Sara Robinson asked how did the statutory sector work with<br />
community groups - what were the issues and its value?<br />
Leo Jansen gave an outline of the political situation in Holland<br />
at the moment because it showed how dynamic, changing<br />
and politically sensitive this area of work continued to be.<br />
The Netherlands had a 25% reduction in their prison<br />
population - why? It mirrored the decrease across Europe,<br />
there was better work with drug addicts in the Netherlands,<br />
a system of Safe Houses and a wider-range of non-custodial<br />
sentences available.<br />
Prisons in the Netherlands had 14 places in two different<br />
prisons for violent extremist offenders but only currently filled<br />
four of these places.<br />
Initiatives had been started in this area:<br />
A prison meeting would be held next month with governors<br />
and experts<br />
Pamphlets had been sent to all prison staff about the issue<br />
- guidance on how to behave towards Muslim prisoners<br />
Progress was being made in a planned, purposeful manner.<br />
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson described SIRAAT s work in<br />
prisons in and outside <strong>London</strong>, through their Strategic Islamic<br />
Research Team .<br />
They had been doing work for 17-20 years - not just since<br />
7/7, though since then more focus had been on home-grown<br />
terrorists.<br />
SIRRAT used 7 risk factors - including circle of change,<br />
they used a mentoring approach, a research evidence base<br />
and their value as an organisation rested in their knowledge<br />
base.<br />
They used their knowledge of faith (and the polemic/dialectic<br />
of Islam) and credibility with TACT/violent extremist/Muslim<br />
prisoners, based on their careful selection of staff, using age<br />
and experience, creating genuine trust and understanding<br />
between their workers and prisoners.<br />
Alyas Karmani described the role of STREET, an NGO in the<br />
UK, working with Muslim offenders in the community and<br />
released TACT prisoners. He acknowledged that it might<br />
appear to be a big leap for statutory agencies to use NGOs<br />
to work with this group, but that they added value to the<br />
task of protecting the public through their credibility with<br />
this offender group, the range of skills and knowledge they<br />
brought with them. NGOs shared similar backgrounds to the<br />
violent extremist offenders they worked with. They were close<br />
to the offenders in age often. They understood the offenders<br />
lives and how to change their beliefs and values and then<br />
their behaviour.<br />
NGOs could reach hard to reach communities with<br />
backgrounds from Pakistan, East Asia, the Caribbean, Horn<br />
of Africa & converts.<br />
NGOs had an important place at the table to assist with the<br />
protection of the public<br />
Questions<br />
We have a long way to go in developing our links with Muslim<br />
community groups in this work, such as we have heard is<br />
going on in the UK - how do we go about it?<br />
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson suggested approaching mosques/<br />
Imams - they need to speak with you and they may develop<br />
their capacity in this area. You may we surprised at their<br />
reactions. Using mentoring via mosques/community groups<br />
can be key.<br />
How do we go about it and can you also assist with exit for<br />
gang members with a faith link?<br />
Alyas Karmani Yes, just build up a relationship with your<br />
community groups and you will see that they have the latent<br />
capability and interest in working with offenders from their<br />
community.<br />
Do your workers and other statutory workers have to be Muslim<br />
to work successfully with this type of offender/prisoner?<br />
Alyas Karmani - Certainly not, teams with mixed faiths amongst<br />
the workers are best. It s important that non-Muslims work<br />
with Muslims and that it is not implied that same faith worker<br />
and offender is the best or only model. Workers do need an<br />
understanding of faith issues to work at all with offenders<br />
from other faith groups but it should not be the case that it<br />
is exclusive. A genuine concern for the individual is treating<br />
them with respect and professionalism as key issues. But,<br />
to engage at a deep level about faith issues and doctrine,<br />
someone with that knowledge will probably only be a Muslim<br />
and/or an Imam.<br />
Not all the NGOs here today are based in mosques or have<br />
Imams involved - mosques should be approached to assist<br />
with doctrinal issues and for their community links.<br />
Alyas Karmani - Some mosques can be conservative<br />
institutions who shy away from this area of working with<br />
offenders at all - so take the point but there can be difficulties<br />
here.<br />
Abdul Raahman Anderson added that SIRAAT worked with a<br />
non-Muslim psychologist.<br />
30 31
Workshop 4: Models of Working with<br />
Radical Right Wing and Politically<br />
Motivated Offenders<br />
Chaired by Dr Harald Weilnbock, Violence Prevention<br />
Network and Professor of the University of Zurich<br />
Judy Korn, Director of the Violence Prevention<br />
Network<br />
Robert Örell, Director of Exit Sweden<br />
Robert Örell is manager at the Swedish Exit, part of<br />
Fryshusets youth centres social projects. He has personal<br />
experiences of leaving an extremist environment and has<br />
worked at Exit for eight years.<br />
He spoke about his personal experiences and also about<br />
Exit s work, which is based on training and consultation to<br />
professionals, family support for relatives of individuals in<br />
extremist environments and client support for disengaged<br />
extremists.<br />
He said Exit supported the individuals who may be involved<br />
in this activity, giving them a place to talk, they supported<br />
the family while the individual may be making the decision<br />
to leave the extremist group.<br />
Judy Korn is co-founder and manager of the Violence<br />
Prevention Network. VPN gets involved after an individual<br />
has made the decision to leave the group they belong to,<br />
and do not get involved at just a thinking stage.<br />
With support from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the<br />
European Union<br />
European Commission - Directorate-General Home Affairs.<br />
This publication reflects the views only of the presenters and participants, and the European Commission cannot be held<br />
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein<br />
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