Conference Report: Selsdon Park, London (pdf, 1.6 MB) - EXOCoP

CONFERENCE REPORT
European Union Projects
Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners
and
Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation
Conference on
Engaging with Violent Extremist Offenders in Prison
and on Probation
Selsdon Park, London, United Kingdom
Monday 4th Wednesday 6th October 2010
1

European Union Project: Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation
European Union Project: Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation
Project Summary
Project Summary
• To develop and research methods of interventions used with violent radical offenders;
• To study the intervention methods developed by the Violence Prevention Network working
with young offenders in German Prisons sentenced for violence and from extremist Muslim
and right wing backgrounds;
• To develop and study a pilot community-based programme in the UK between London
Probation Trust, Stockwell Green Community Services and London College of Business
Management & Information Technology supporting more effective supervision of radicalised
Muslim offenders released from prison on license and under probation supervision;
‣ To pilot and study a community based partnership in the UK between London Probation
Trust and Stockwell Green Community Services and London College of BMIT supporting
more effective supervision of radicalised Muslim offenders
‣ To carry out research and evaluation of the two different models of intervention and
engagement
‣ To host expert seminars in the UK and Germany to highlight issues and share learning
‣ 1 st trans-national Conference held in Berlin, May 2010, to inform and develop methods of
intervention and engagement
‣ 2 nd trans-national Conference held in the UK, October 2010, to showcase project learning
and best practice and to examine current practice
• To evaluate the two different live methods of intervention, identifying best practice
approaches, obstacles to success and issues of transferability;
• To showcase project learning at Conferences and Seminars.
The TPVR project studies methods of rehabilitation and reintegration which have proven
successful in working with violent offenders from religious fundamentalist and right-wing political
extremist backgrounds. The aims of these interventions are to de-radicalise and prevent exoffenders
from recommitting acts of violence and terrorism.
This project will be carried out by:
1. Studying the work of Violence Prevention Network in Germany who engage with violent
young prisoners from religious fundamentalist and extreme right wing backgrounds;
2. Developing a pilot community-based programme in the UK between London Probation
Trust, Stockwell Green Community Services and London College of BMIT supporting
more effective supervision of radicalised Muslim offenders;
3. Commissioning research to evaluate the two different live methods of intervention
identifying best practice approaches, obstacles to success and issues of transferability
Dissemination of learning from this project is by way of conferences, publications and local
seminars in partner countries.
Project Partners
London Probation Trust, UK (lead partner)
National Offender Management Service (NOMS), UK
Stockwell Green Community Services (SGCS), UK
London College of Business Management & Information Technology (LCBMIT), UK
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany
European Institute for Social Services (EISS), UK
Project Outputs
‣ To study the model of intervention and engagement used by VPN with violent young
prisoners from right wing and Muslim backgrounds
1
2 3

European Union Project: Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners
European Union Project: Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners
Project Summary
Project Summary
• To research the key influencing factors that can radicalise prisoners and offenders;
• To train criminal justice staff working in prisons or with prisoners released on license in the
community to be aware of these factors;
• To provide recommendations for improved management and supervision of terrorist related
offenders;
• To develop a range of training materials that might be used in other EU countries;
• To transfer information & learning to other EU countries through a network of interested
practitioners within the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and other EU countries.
This EU funded project addresses the training and awareness-raising needs of Criminal Justice
staff working in Prisons and in the community with prisoners and ex-prisoners released on
licence. It seeks to raise awareness of the features of prison life and community supervision that
could be factors or influences in violent radicalisation.
Netherlands; and recommendations for management and supervision of terrorist related
offenders.
‣ To develop a transferable range of training package & materials for use in the UK,
Germany, the Netherlands and possibly wider EU countries to support Criminal Justice
staff working with radicalised offenders.
‣ 85 Criminal Justice staff trained in the UK and Germany.
‣ Expert seminars held in the UK and Germany to highlight issues and share learning of
working with violent right-wing extremists and those from a Muslim background
‣ 1 st trans-national Conference held in Spain, January 2010, to inform and develop the
training course and to disseminate information.
‣ 2 nd trans-national Conference held in the UK, October 2010 (date to be confirmed), to
showcase project’s training pilots, learning and best practice outline and share research
in relation to extremism and radicalisation and look at examples of current practice.
‣ Evaluation of training pilots by the University of Bremen.
‣ Best practice network of interested practitioners established between partner countries
and other EU members states.
The project will design and pilot staff training programmes for staff who work with prisoners,
released prisoners and those on supervision. The training programme and materials will be
designed from an international standpoint to examine how transferable such training might be
across a number of European criminal justice systems.
The project uniquely brings together the expertise of an established and respected NGO in
Germany, the Violence Prevention Network, with the criminal justice experience of the UK,
through London Probation and NOMS, in delivering expert courses for prison and community
based staff.
The project is developing a unique "through the gate" high quality training package that can be
used by staff working with prisoners in prison or those released on licence. Stockwell Green
Community Services in the UK are an experienced NGO dedicated to offering resettlement routes
into education and employment for those caught up in or in danger of becoming violent radicals.
This combination will ensure that the training delivered to staff will provide sufficient awareness of
the issues for staff working with prisoners, licensees or offenders in the community.
Project Partners
London Probation, UK (lead partner)
Secretaría General de Instituciones Penitenciarias (SGIP), Spain
National Offender Management Service (NOMS), UK
Stockwell Green Community Services, UK
CEP – The European Organisation for Probation, The Netherlands
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany
University of Bremen, Germany
Project Outputs
‣ To carry out research on what acts to radicalise prisoners and offenders; current practice
and experiences in Europe, with a particular focus on the UK, Germany and the
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4 5

Welcome
Setting the Scene: welcome from conference co-chairs
Leo Tigges, Secretary General of CEP the European Organisation for Probation
Richard Pickering, Head of NOMS Security
Group (conference co-chair)
Stephen Moran, Director of Business
Development, London Probation Trust
(conference co-chair)
Leo Tigges explained that when the project began around
18 months ago there were several aims:
To study the factors that can radicalise prisoners and
offenders;
To train criminal justice staff working with prisoners and
offenders released into the community;
To provide recommendations for improved management
and supervision of terrorism related offenders;
To develop a range of training materials for staff and to
transfer information and learning to other EU countries
that were not involved in the project.
He stated that the experience already gained within the
community context especially within Muslim communities
in the UK - was of great importance.
He said probation and the prison sector needed to work
together. The probation sector was fairly united in the
European Organisation for Probation; nearly every ministry
of justice was a member of the CEP. However, there was
no organisation that united a prison sector across Europe.
This was a priority, not only for this project in which it was
so important, but also on a European level because then
the experiences would become much clearer and be more
effectively disseminated. It was also a priority on these
topics for which probation and the prison sector had to
work together, because the end-to-end management of
offenders was very important.
the project, but not the end of the process in which we were
trying to join experiences and find out what best practices
there were in this field, so there would be continuity.
He said the conference agenda was deliberately ambitious.
They were looking to build on the discussions held at the
Segovia conference in January, which identified a number
of challenges, differences and areas of common ground.
The conference would be focussing in particular on the
experience gained from two projects led by London
Probation Trust (LPT). He wanted to test some of the
assumptions people brought from their own areas of work
against the experiences of others.
He expected and hoped there would be an open and
challenging exchange of ideas during the conference.
There was a fantastic range of speakers from a wide range
of backgrounds.
He hoped delegates could learn from each others different
perspectives.
Stephen Moran gave a brief overview of LPT, a lead partner
in both projects. He said the Trust was unique, it was
possibly the largest probation trust in the world; managing
approximately 20% of the national caseload and serving a
London population of 7.96 million.
Every year Trust staff prepared 33,000 court reports and
worked with 3,300 new victims of sexual or violent crime.
They had a caseload of over 13,000 victims.
The annual budget was £150m and they employed 3,000
staff. They were organised across 23 local delivery units
responsible for offender management. There was a
separate Interventions Director responsible for delivering
Community Payback, offending behaviour programmes
and approved premises.
He said the Trust was a lead partner in the Reducing
Influences that Radicalise Prisoners (RIRP) and Towards
Preventing Violent Radicalisation (TPVR) projects, along
with other European projects. These were two very
important projects. There was a broad range of partners
from the security and voluntary sectors.
The conference brought together delegates from across
Europe to highlight issues and share learning.
He added that in this field, we could only be successful
by looking at how prison and probation could work more
closely by exploring and assembling experiences, how
the multi-agency approach functioned and what were the
advantages, disadvantages and best practice and how the
involvement of the community was organised.
This was a process. The conference would be the end of
6 7

Overview of the European Commission Projects
Nick Hammond, Project Manager of Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners,
Equalities and Community Engagement, London Probation Trust
Sara Robinson, Project Manager of Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation and
Assistant Chief Officer (Central Extremism Unit), London Probation Trust
extended from Stockwell Green to a number of other
community groups.
It was important to note, that in studying some of this
research the project had had a slight change of direction.
The original intention was to produce analysis using two
case studies. It was difficult to do that though, particularly
in the UK, because the target group was very small and
so the individuals would be easily identifiable. Secondly,
because the target group was small a lot of attention
and research was being placed on the same individuals
and the project did not want to create a type of celebrity,
which could create problems in itself. Therefore, the project
shifted to looking at the specific projects and what they
were delivering.
Nick Hammond said LPT knew that, due to its size and
diversity, it would need to address the impact of violent
extremism. Its staff in prisons would need to know how to
work with those convicted of terrorism offences, as well as
offenders in the community convicted of other offences,
but vulnerable to radicalisation and violent extremism.
They began in May 2008 and built on the ongoing work
collated during two previous successful EU projects on
hate crime.
They wanted to understand the recruitment process into
the violent radicalisation of individuals in custody, on
licence and in the community. They also wanted to know
what could be used and learnt from their work with violent
extremists.
They wanted to learn how this knowledge might be better
used by staff in face-to-face work with offenders and what
knowledge might be transferable across EU states.
They wanted to conduct research into existing practices of
working with radicalised offenders and violent extremists.
They also wanted to develop a variety of training processes
for staff and those working in communities within these
groups.
Two international conferences were held to bring EU
countries together, developing potential for networking.
Key were the partners in the RIRP project:
1.
2.
3.
4.
London Probation Trust the lead partner and project
lead
CEP the European Organisation for Probation in
Europe
NOMS
Stockwell Green Community Services
5.
6.
7.
Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany
University of Bremen, Bremen Institute of Criminal
Policy
Spanish Penitentiary Service
Research was commissioned in two parts. The first looked at
what had been done in probation in Europe and worldwide.
There was also some research interviewing offenders and
ex-offenders about their experiences in prison and in the
community. This was used to develop training methods
in the UK and Germany - 85 criminal justice staff were
trained.
The evaluation is being conducted by the University of
Bremen.
Sara Robinson said the TPVR project was due to end in
January 2011. LPT was leading the project with the support
of NOMS.
The project was exploring interventions delivered by VPN
in Germany and Stockwell Green Community Services,
specifically with these offending groups.
Through the TPVR project, research would be carried out
and developed into interventions with radicalised offenders,
identifying what worked and what did not work.
The project was in two parts. The first was to look at
intervention methods developed by VPN in Germany, who
were working with young offenders sentenced for right
wing, violent offences and also, more recently, offenders
from the Muslim community, who had been involved in acts
of violence.
Secondly, in the UK they were looking to develop
community based programmes for supporting more
effective supervision for radicalised Muslims who had been
released on licence.
The project hoped to study both methods, identify best
practice and to sum-up the obstacles to success in both
countries.
The outcomes aimed for were to produce a research
report and to develop a set of guidelines for practitioners.
Guidelines for managers and policy makers also needed
to be inter-related.
A DVD was also being produced about how learning could
be shared further.
In terms of progress to date, an interim report had been
produced and an evaluation of the methodology had been
The other issue considered was that the contexts were very
different in the UK to Germany. In Germany the VPN model
used group=work in a custodial environment, facilitated by
two highly trained workers.
In the UK, since 2005, anti-terrorism legislation had led
to the imprisonment of a range of people involved in the
preparation of terrorist activity, such as people being
sentenced on the basis of activity like the use of pamphlets
or attendance at training camps. This created a wide range
of people they would be working with.
LPT had previous experience of working with offenders
whose crimes were motivated by hatred, but little experience
of working with people motivated by religion or faith. They
had some knowledge, but they needed to develop it.
The LPT model was based on an individual basis rather
than groups, before and after release from prison. The
Probation Service had a statutory responsibility for
managing their risk, but could not do this on their own - if
they wanted to make a difference they needed to work with
non-statutory, Muslim community organisations to address
the socio, spiritual and cultural ideology.
The evaluation looked at the key principles behind the
methodology:
to identify key areas of best practice;
to identify what is the difference between the target
groups;
to identify what are the professional skills needed;
to identify how are different models managed;
to identify how can we measure success;
Sara Robinson ended by thanking everyone who had been
involved in the project.
8 9

Perspectives on Violent Extremism and Radicalisation
The View from Central Government
Asim Hafeez, Head of Prevent Delivery
Unit, Office for Security and Counter
Terrorism, Home Office
Asim Hafeez said the Prevent agenda in the UK had been
running for the last three to four years. His responsibility
covered the delivery of aspects of preventing violent
extremism, ranging from; delivery in local communities; to
engaging with local authorities and community groups; to
policy delivery and working with the criminal justice sector.
Also included were community intervention providers,
who did some of the face to face de-radicalisation in
communities and in prisons.
He said we could not be too complacent. They tried
very hard to articulate the threat, to get communities to
understand why we were doing this. In terms of preventing
violent extremism, as opposed to preventing terrorism,
they talked more about the threat to individuals. Individuals
and communities were vulnerable. It was more practical for
communities to talk about the threat to their young people,
the threat they may face from being drawn into violent
extremism.
Part of what they were doing under the Prevent agenda
was to talk to communities and delivery partners about
the difficulties faced. Articulation of threat was incredibly
important, he said.
He spoke about pathways to radicalisation and the body of
evidence that explained what caused radicalisation, but he
said we were not as acutely aware of the vulnerabilities. He
said we may be aware of some of the pathways that lead
people to radicalisation, but were we aware of what made a
person vulnerable to getting there in the first place?
He asked how success could be evaluated and agreed
it was very difficult. However, he said we would be
irresponsible if, in the absence of definitive analysis, we
stood back and said we were not going to do anything.
We had a responsibility to maintain the security and safety
of our communities and therefore we had to make sure a
process of evaluation was going on, that we were delivering
what we could to the best of our ability.
A perception in the Muslim community in particular, he
said, was that the Prevent agenda was being done to
communities not with communities. He said we had to
implement Prevent with communities. Communities had to
be on-board to deliver the Prevent agenda and in order to
have community buy-in we had to know the right people in
the communities.
He congratulated NOMS and the Probation Service for
the work that was ongoing across the country to prevent
radicalisation.
Questions from the floor:
Q1. How do you see the Prevent agenda playing out in a
European context?
AH: He said what he had described was a UK government
policy. He added that partnership working was happening
across Europe, there was an enormous amount of
sharing of knowledge, opportunities to meet colleagues at
conferences, encouraging networking and partnership was
developing.
The View from Academia
Maaike Lousberg, TNO Defence, Security
and Safety
Maaike Lousberg spoke about research she had conducted
in 2007, which began with studying how you could tell if
someone was radicalised. Research was also conducted
into interventions.
She explained she had attended a lot of conferences on
radicalisation and spoken to a lot of people that worked
in that field. Most told her they knew when someone was
radicalised, they wanted to do something about it, but they
didnt know what to do. A lot of people told her they needed
interventions.
She tried to gain insight into what had been written. There
was information in many reports, but nothing was brought
together and structured, so that was what she tried to do.
Questions were focussed on what was out there, what did
frontline workers have and did it work? Why did it work or
why didnt it work? What else did we need to know?
They looked at two kinds of interventions focussing
on radical Muslims and the extreme right wing. They
also focussed on interventions carried out directly with
individuals. Thirdly they focussed on specific groups that
could carry out such interventions.
They collected more than 200 interventions, which they
gave to policy makers, researchers and some frontline
workers for their thoughts.
There were a lot of differences in their responses, a
lot of the interventions focussed on the prevention of
radicalisation. but few could be used when someone
was already radicalised. Also, a lot of interventions were
focussed on radical Muslims rather than on the extreme
right. The third issue raised was that there were almost no
repressive interventions.
The next question they wanted to know was does it
work?
The interventions described were all used by frontline
workers. They asked about 300 frontline workers if they
had used the intervention and if they thought it worked.
The conclusions were that they thought the interventions
were effective. TNO asked why this was, as most of the
researchers and experts they had spoken to were more
critical than that.
There were also some conclusions about specific
interventions. One of them was about education. If you
wanted to educate people about what it was like to be a
radical or how the pattern of radicalisation took place, it
had to be focussed on experience.
She spoke about guaranteed continuity, if projects were
not continued; you would not reach your goal. A lack of
effective measures was still a problem.
She then spoke about what had happened since the
research was carried out in 2007.
She said the general discussion about what radicalisation
was still existed and she wondered whether this would
ever be resolved. It was difficult to describe in a couple of
sentences.
She said there was a lack of interventions in prisons and
interventions for other types of radicalisation. There was
also a lack of effective measures.
Research was taking place in the Netherlands into the
evaluation of specific interventions.
She said they had now started a new project looking into
a non-linear model of radicalisation, to develop curative
interventions and test them in the field.
Questions from the floor:
Q1. Did you get any ideas as to the answer of what
interventions work and with whom?
Maaike Lousberg: That was the problem. You cannot do
that. If everybody says it works, experts say they are not
sure about that, because you have no way to measure this.
That is why we started defining the minimal conditions of
effectiveness, but to answer your question we still do not
know. What do the people in the field perceive as effective?
If they all say everything they do is very effective and
successful it is kind of hard to believe and the problem we
had with that is they did not really have specific reasons for
why it was effective.
We tried to target some of it by saying if you are going to
do this, you need to do this and this and this or it will not
work.
Q2. Did the project have clear objectives at the beginning
or did you ask what objectives there were for the
interventions?
Maaike Lousberg: That is actually one of the conclusions;
to say that there should be a base structure that everybody
uses for interventions so you can do exactly what you are
saying.
Q3. Did the people you spoke to have a definition of
radicalisation?
Maaike Lousberg: There were about 300 people who
worked with Muslim radicalisation and the extreme right.
I asked them to define what they thought radicalisation
was in this specific field. The answers they gave were very
diverse; that is how I concluded there is not one specific
view of what radicalisation is.
10 11

The View from the Community
Toaha Qureshi MBE, Chief Executive of Stockwell Green Community Services and
London College of Business Management and IT
Ideology and the Language of Violent Extremism: Terminology and Counter-
Narratives
Dr Omar Ashour, Director of Middle East Studies, University of Exeter
In the case of Jihaadism of the Islamist political ideologies,
Jihaadism in particular was an ideology that believed in
fighting as the most legitimate and sometimes the most
effective means for social and political change.
Jihaadism was a political Islamist ideology and we should
not conflict it with other Islamist ideologies.
He said there were multiple dimensions of the new counternarrative.
Toaha Qureshi began by emphasising that when statutory
bodies started to think of working with community
organisations there were three fundamental factors they
needed to observe;
issues of education, employability and enhanced training.
They also engaged with universities and educational bodies
to encourage them to support employability enhancement
and training programmes.
Dr Ashour spoke about research he had been conducting
over the last 10 years into de-radicalisation what were its
causes and what were the conditions that underlined its
success or failure?
Fuad Nahdi, Director of Radical Middle
Way
1.
2.
3.
Does this community group or individual have that
particular knowledge about the problem and the
knowledge about the community?
Does this group have credibility among the
community?
Do they have a track record, have they got
experience?
In 1999-2004 SGCS started programmes called SEED and
PROSEED. They were evaluated in 2003 and put in place
very effectively in 2004-2008.
LPT and NOMS then came in with two projects RIRP
and TPVR. Those people who were referred by LPT,
had said, had LPT not devised these ways to work with
community organisations, they would have re-offended.
The measurement of success was therefore the number
of these people that did not re-offend. To the organisation
and to LPT that made it a success. It all depended how you
define success, he said.
He said the community organisation had spoken about
sustainability and that the government was not going to
support the programmes all the time, so they devised
mechanisms by which they could support themselves.
They were now in a position, he said, where they could
support these kinds of programmes. They were working in
partnership with many organisations, not just locally but
also on a global level.
In terms of the people they started working with; they helped
to get them into mainstream society by working on the
In terms of training projects, they enabled the community
to design a training programme for the Metropolitan Police
and LPT. More than 200 people had been trained through
the programme.
He then spoke about the PALM project, which he said was
an extension of the SEED and PROSEED projects, looking
at Terrorism Act related offenders, identified radicals and
vulnerable individuals. They received referrals from
agencies such as probation, police, and social services.
Questions from the floor:
Q1. Is there broad support from mosques for co-operating
in this nature?
AH: As far as we are concerned we get tremendous support
from the mosques. We did not have any opposition from
the mosques, because we had the mosque leadership on
board.
He said we could distinguish between processes of deradicalisation.
Sometimes we were talking about programmes targeting
a specific community, like a prison community, sometimes
we were targeting individuals.
Academics were very keen on words and on concepts.
Comprehensive de-radicalisation usually involved types
of de-radicalisation process ideological + behavioural +
organisational.
He tended to assess the programmes in six crucial
characteristics. One was comprehensiveness, also how
sensitive is it and respectful of social political conscience
of the country in question. The assessment was how many
people had graduated from the programme.
He spoke about the causes of successful de-radicalisation
processes:
Leadership matters (spiritual v organisational);
State pressures (multiple effects);
Social inducement (internal and external);
Selective inducements (impact of micro-politics).
The common dimensions of the narrative of violent
groups:
Political;
Historical;
Instrumental;
Socio-Psychological;
Religious/Theological.
Fuad Nahdi said he had been a journalist for most of his
adult life so he understood and appreciated the power of
words, terminologies and ideologies, but such a discussion
could be taken out of context.
Any strategy must have some ground rules. This should
involve respect and the ability to listen and empathise and
to seek convergence not conversion.
Over the last four years Radical Middle Way has held 180
meetings across the country, from one to one meetings,
to events that 10,000 people visited. They have visited 34
countries.
He believed, he said, that there was nothing out there which
we could not deal with but it was the attitude, the approach
and the language that we used which was important.
He said the most vulnerable people also happened to be the
most dynamic elements of the community. It was important
not to have fear but to have the courage to confront them,
but by respecting them.
He said we could not answer all the questions, but we could
put a narrative about what it meant. He said we were going
to get the kind of Muslim in this country that we invested in.
The British Muslim identity in this country was critical.
He said the big issue was that most Muslim young people
wanted to be treated with respect. They wanted an approach
that respected their views.
12 13

Analysis of research from the European Commission projects Reducing
Influences that Radicalise Prisoners and Towards Preventing Violent
Radicalisation
Talal Rajab, The Quilliam Foundation
Alyas Karmani, Co-Director of STREET
Talal Rajab said Quilliam was a counter extremist think
tank based in London challenging Islamist and far right
extremism.
There was a lot of debate, he said, about what radicalisation
was and terminology around this agenda. It was important
to try find out what is this ideology and the main foundations
that were driving it.
He spoke about work his organisation had developed
regarding four basic foundations that he said drove this
ideology.
He said the first was that violent extremists did not view
Islam as a religion. If you looked at a lot of violent extremist
groups and the way they described Islam, they would not
compare it to Christianity or Judaism, they would say it
was a political ideology; they would rather compare it to
ideologies such as capitalism, socialism or communism.
He said this was one of the key foundations of the ideology
of Islamism and that it differed from what the main followers
of Islam believed.
The second foundation of this ideology was the belief that
political sovereignty lay with God and that Sharia had to be
implemented as state law in society. They believed it was
forbidden for Muslims to follow man-made law. That differed
from what mainstream Muslims believed in. These have
political objectives with a political purpose, not religious,
he said.
The third foundation was that Muslims around the world
represented one body with one leadership. No country in
the world, in their eyes, was implementing state law at an
Islamic level or uniting Islam under one leadership.
The last foundation was the ultimate objectives of groups
like Al-Qaeda. That was the re-establishment of an Islamic
faith that could unite all Muslims around the world by
force.
He said he wanted to look at how this ideology manifested
itself in a prison environment. He had tried to break it down
to three push and pull factors.
He said one of the reasons why this ideology had resonance
with second and third generation British Muslims was
because many were facing an identity crisis in their lives.
This was not something that was just specific to Muslim
communities, he said, but when you had an ideology that
put society into two camps Muslim and non-Muslim, this
made it more pertinent than it seemed.
He said that research had shown that when people went
into prison they found a new identity. Some found religion,
for others they liked to identify with people who looked like
them and shared similar experiences.
He said the second pull factor to this ideology was
grievances. They (extremist groups) used grievances to
draw people to their ideology. When it came to the prison
environment these grievances were more acute.
He said that recommendations advocated by Quilliam
included:
Looking at a counter narrative to stem the tide of people
being driven into ideology - for example, to be working
with people who had the authority to make judgements
on Islam to help produce a counter-narrative;
De-radicalisation Centres units where people
convicted of terrorism could be rehabilitated;
Address the grievances that pulled people into the
ideology - policy makers should look at the grievances
and where they had been real, seek to address them;
Work with individuals once they had come out of prison
and offer some sort of mentoring scheme to help them
on the path away from ideology;
Look to decrease tensions between Muslim and non-
Muslim prisoners.
Following Talal Rajabs input a debate took place regarding
Islamist ideology.
Alyas Karmani spoke about research he had done in
2008/09. He explained that he worked for one of the
community support agencies involved in working with TACT
(Terrorist Act) and high risk Muslim offenders. He said they
were using a model which took into account social factors,
emotional, physical factors, and bringing together partners
from that field to work together.
He said the more perspectives that we brought into the
debate the broader our view became.
Language was very powerful and we should be very
careful about the language used. Language translated
into process as well. Some of the language used was very
dehumanising.
As part of the research they spoke to Muslim TACT
offenders and began with a small sample of 12 individuals,
subsequent to that they worked with about 20-30 individuals.
They also worked with offender managers and interviewed
community support agencies.
The offender managers all identified this as a new area of
supervision. They hadnt worked with offenders before who
were of religious motivation in terms of their offence. Many
of whom hadnt offended before.
They identified there was a whole range of challenges
relating to the high risk associated with offenders, a lack
of awareness of the issues related to Islam and Islamic
extremism and the complex nature of the issues, the
multiplicity of the agencies involved in the cases and a lack
of clarity in terms of where to get guidance and support.
He said that 18 months on, a lot of offender managers he
had been working with had got a lot better and a baseline
support.
14 15
In terms of community support agencies, they identified
this was a new area of work for the criminal justice sector
and that there were few comparisons with other types of
offending behaviour.
Many of the aspects of the support, rehabilitations and
supervision of Muslim offenders was different and not fully
understood by non-Muslim workers.
The other challenge was individuals in terms of the
assessment models; they did not really fit with this area of
work either. There was a sense of a lack of confidence and
a lack of control in relation to supervision.
He spoke about supervision styles and their impact on
offenders - an open style of supervision that developed
rapport and understanding contrasting with a closed style.
He spoke about influencer factors and said that during the
work they identified five broad factors and approximately
60 sub-factors.
A lot of offender managers aspired to use an open style,
but still the awareness was not there in terms of what the
influencer factors were.
Due to this being a very challenging area people became
overly sensitive and there was a sense of not feeling in
control of the situation and perhaps being potentially
manipulated by the offender, because they were in control
and being misdirected.
He asked - What do we mean by radicalisation? Young people
experimented, explored different world views, different
media and they found in that process of experimentation
young Muslims become much more observant in terms of
faith as well. He said we needed to be discerning enough
to recognise the difference between someone who had
been an observant Muslim and someone who saw Islam
as a legitimate route to violence.
He said that in relation to pre-arrest, one of the clear factors
from the research was that all the individuals were unique
in terms of their experiences. Some were graduates, some
hadnt done well at school, all had a different experience
in terms of how they were radicalised. The experience of
arrest and detention in each case was very complex in its
own right.
However, they had identified that pre-arrest there had been
a series of critical incidents in which the individuals started
to look at the world with a very different perspective.
They came across a whole range of experiences in terms
of arrest and detention. Some individuals had never been

in prison before and found it very difficult to cope. Some
came out of prison quite resilient and others came out very
damaged, very broken and even more vulnerable.
One of the recommendations they made for first time young
offenders was to manage that process when they first went
into prison.
In terms of supervision, core to the relationship-building
process was trying to develop a mutual understanding and
open communication.
He said the Core Influencer Factors were:
1. Emotional well-being
2. Social exclusion and estrangement factors
3. Perceived injustice and grievance
4. Foreign policy
5. Extremist ideology
They developed a risk assessment framework which had
gone into informing the Probation Service.
He spoke of Deradicalisation Interventions:
1. Emotional well-being and support
2. Re-integration
3. Breaking down us and them
4. Theological Resilience
5. Justifiable Cause
6. Mentoring
7. Alternative Narrative
8. Compassionate re-integration
9. Safe space open discussions
He said it was about tailoring the package of interventions
by doing robust assessment and in that assessment
process looking at things from a range of perspectives.
Linda Pizani Williams, European Institute
of Social Services and Dr Harald
Weilnbock, Violence Prevention Network
and Professor at the University of Zurich
They spoke about research they had conducted. Their
objectives were to do a comparative analysis from the two
intervention methods (from the UK and Germany) and
identify which had a positive impact, what practitioner skills
were needed, what underlying knowledge was required,
what the risk management issues were and how success
was measured.
They were also interested in the theoretical basis of
interventions.
There were some basic differences between the two
methods, but the similarities surprised them.
They said the basic differences were critical. London
Probation Trust was concerned with individual offenders
released on licence. They were very challenging, high
risk, high profile offenders and the researchers had to
remember that in the UK the counter terrorism legislation
was particularly stringent. It criminalised activities that
were not necessarily criminalised in other countries.
Supervision was shared with statutory agencies and the
Muslim community organisations who had credibility with
offenders.
They said the work in Germany was conducted in prison
and post-release. They worked in group sessions in
prisons and afterwards were able to do post release work
with individuals. They thought linking the work in prisons
and afterwards had been key to the success of the model.
VPN have always worked with right wing offenders and in
the last two years had started to work with offenders from
a minority background.
In terms of the findings, the similarities also took the
researchers by surprise, bearing in mind the different
methods being used.
The relationship with the offender was absolutely crucial. It
had to be based on trust and the offender needed to see
they were being treated with respect. This had an enormous
impact on their willingness to engage with the process.
Findings basic similarities
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Therapeutic relationship based on trust and mutual
respect
Intellectual, cultural and emotional approach
Challenges learned, narratives/memories
Institutional independence
Re-socialising key competencies
Importance of family work
The purpose of the research was to get an idea of the
implications for partners and this was to identify appropriate
models of intervention. The same model would not work for
everyone.
The personal qualities of the practitioners and facilitators
were critical.
Implications for practice
Appropriate model of intervention
Personal qualities of practitioners/facilitators
Professional skills
Knowledge and expertise
Techniques
Robust risk assessment
What next:
Management issues
How to work with and through other organisations
What do offender managers need?
What do community facilitators need?
What are the training needs for all stakeholders?
This session finished with a focus group exercise, in which delegates were asked to list ideas for organisational issues,
inter-agency issues, offender management issues and practitioner issues. These ideas would help as a deliverable for
the project.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
16 17

Making Good: Lessons from the Social Psychology of Desistance and Role
Exit for Intervention Projects
What We Can Learn from Working with Hate Crime Offenders and Right Wing
Extremists
Professor Shadd Maruna, Director of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice,
School of Law, Queens University Belfast
Robert Orell, Director of Exit Sweden
Professor Maruna spoke about how aspects of
personalities changed over time. Personality traits such as
aggressiveness and impulsivity probably stayed consistent
over a life course, but what changed over time was our
narrative identity, which was also a key aspect of our
personality.
The difference with extremist crimes was that even the
crime itself was a form of communication. The activities
continued a kind of narrative that got picked up by others.
His research, for the most part, could be found in the book
Making Good based on the Liverpool Desistance Study. He
wanted to study what it was that made offenders different
from non-offenders. The research looked at desisting exoffenders
and active offenders.
They looked at Condemnation Scripts (active offenders)
versus Redemption Scripts (desisting group).
The active offenders condemnation script was:
Pessimistic views of life chances;
See no real choices for them;
View future as outside their control;
Perceived the world in deterministic (almost mechanical)
ways.
He spoke about a narrative based exit strategy:
Rejecting past behaviours without rejecting of whole
self (maintaining identity of a good person who did
wrong things);
Exit with dignity;
Change with continuity.
The core elements of the redemption script were:
The establishment of a good core self involving a set
of consistent moral values;
The desire to draw on experiences to give something
back for next generation;
Beating the System as they join it.
He also spoke briefly about the design of the new Making
Good Initiative, a small-scale resettlement project for a
group of Loyalist-affiliated prisoners in separate housing
conditions in Maghaberry Prison, Northern Ireland, being
facilitated by a group of community work specialists from
the University of Ulster. The key elements of the Initiative,
which draws on Marunas Making Good research,
include: exploring the past, in order to write a new future,
downloading and deconstructing past identities, then rebiographing
the past for a better future.
Robert Orell explained that Exit was a non-governmental
organisation working with people who wanted to leave
the White Power Movement. They took a very individual
approach and worked with the parents and families of
activists to support them in what it meant to have a son or
daughter who was an active neo-Nazi. They also provided
counselling and education for prisoners on how to leave
these kinds of groups.
He spoke about his own life experiences. He was 30
years old and grew up in Stockholm. He had had a good
childhood, but things changed when he began to get low
grades during school and not succeeding in tests affected
him. He had to re-sit a year which he said, for him, was a
major trauma.
He realised that he was not good at school, but he could
still have an identity by being a bully. During a three week
educational trip he met some older Swedish boys who
were football supporters. He went with them to a football
match, which was a massive experience for him, to be part
of a mass of 3000 people. He was a very angry young man
and in the supporters groups he could take his anger and
point it somewhere. He completely got into football; it gave
him a meaning, an identity and a feeling of being part of
a gang.
In that supporters group there was also a lot of tendency to
xenophobia and white power groups.
This all brought him into contact with the white power
movement.
He started to read the literature of the movement, which
made him a lot more radicalised. During that time he was
hanging out with a gang of football supporters and neo-
Nazis; there was a lot of drinking, fighting and bad living.
18 19
After a year or two he stopped drinking, started taking
physical exercise, and doing a lot more reading. He started
to think about his friends; they were supposed to be the
elite, but they were drinking five days a week and not doing
much exercise. He started to think that something was
wrong with the situation.
When he was 18 he started military service. This was one
of the absolute turning points because he was good at it;
he liked the system of hierarchy. However, he had a police
record for neo-Nazi activities, which meant that he was not
allowed to have a gun in the military service training. For
the last four months of his military service he had to take
care of a boat and live alone on it. This meant he had a lot
of time on his own to think and to reflect on what he wanted
to do with his life.
During the summer he made contact with Exit. The most
important thing was that he could talk to somebody who
had had a similar experience, who fully understood what
he was going through. When he finished his military service
he began helping out at Exit and in January 2000 became
employed there. Three years ago he became a director of
Exit.
Questions from the floor
Q1. A delegate said they worked with TACT offenders in
the UK and one of the common things they often found in
their backgrounds was that they had a poor relationship
with their father - Can you identify with that from your own
perspective and from the work you do with other boys going
through this process?
RO said he had good contact with his father, so he wouldnt
say that was a lack of a role model for him and he wouldnt
be so sure how often that would be one of the issues for
Exits clients. He was sure it would be one issue, but not
for all.
Q2. What was it about the four months on the boat that was
significant?
RO said he thought it was the first time in his life that he
had had a dialogue with himself Who am I? Where am I
going? What have I done? It was the first time he had ever
sat down and reflected on the movement.
Q3. A delegate asked when RO was speaking to clients,
which part of his own history caught on best?
RO said what clients mostly got attuned to was the
process of being radicalised, how he first got in contact,
who contacted him, how it changed him. He said this
was probably because the clients could identify with this
themselves.

Linking Operational Needs and the Evidence Base
Judy Korn, Director of the Violence
Prevention Network
Al Reid, Head of Dangerous Offenders
Section, NOMS
Judy Korn spoke about her work with VPN. They started
their work in 2001 with violent juveniles from right wing
extremists in prisons and transferred the model to offenders
with a migrant background from Muslim communities.
What was interesting, she said, was that they found more
similarities than differences and that the same techniques
could be used.
There were two main differences. One was that after about
two years of doing the training programmes with the young
Muslims they decided to integrate religious authorities on
their team of trainers, because for the trainers to talk with
the young people about their interpretation of the Koran
without having experience of interpreting the Koran was not
possible. So they trained two Imams to become trainers on
their programme.
Secondly, they changed their work with the families and
communities of these offenders. In the group of young
migrants with a Muslim background, the families and
communities were much more powerful than right wing
extremist offenders so they had to integrate them much
earlier, find out who the positive supporters were and who
could be integrated into the training process in prisons to
prepare for release, so they would get positive support and
not be at risk of being exploited by extremist groups.
Al Reid said just over two and a half years ago NOMS
committed to doing some work on interventions with
extremist offenders and those convicted of offences related
to terrorism.
When the work began it was a new direction for NOMS to
consider intervening and working with terrorist offenders
in the way that has now been done, especially in the
community.
During the work they quite quickly recognised that
offender managers working in the community were already
intervening in some way with these offenders. They were
doing the best they could with limited knowledge and
so NOMS had to respond to that in a way that provided
them with support and guidance, whilst at the same time
recognising everyone was learning as they were going.
Workshops were organised for offender managers who
were supervising the cases. A national training package
was also developed with colleagues in the Home Office,
which was aimed at awareness-raising for all staff and
case work advice and guidance was made available on an
individual basis for offender managers.
Just as important as the training was a training needs
analysis to see what gaps existed for staff in terms of
knowledge and skills and how those gaps could be filled
effectively.
A lot of work was put into improving information sharing
between agencies.
In terms of the challenges, they were dealing with a small
number of individuals, but there was the potential for highlevel
risk and they needed to protect against that.
He said that above all, at the centre, they must enable
frontline staff to do their jobs effectively, providing the
right level of guidance and support and ensuring working
relationships facilitated effective delivery.
Sarah Marsden spoke about research she was conducting
with Simon Cornwall from the Central Extremism Unit
(CEU) at LPT, which aimed to understand the outcomes of
the process the CEU does with terrorism offenders, based
on interviews with offender managers. She was six months
into the one year project and so was not in a position to
give any definitive results, but she could give an idea of
where the research was going.
She said they wanted to understand the processes and
the outcomes and they also needed to monitor progress.
Importantly, the research needed to assist decision making,
to be helpful and practical and to inform programme
development and implementation.
She said each person had different paths in and out of
radicalisation. This was compounded by a high level of risk;
the consequences of making a mistake were severe. The
nature of risk changed over time and with the individual.
She spoke about theoretical approaches. In trying to
understand how we might reduce re-offending she spoke
about the Risk Needs Responsibility Model and said that
alongside that was the Good Lives Model, which aimed to
encourage desistance from crime rather than reduce risk.
The two models had traditionally been put in opposition
although it was now understood both could help improve
our understanding of how to deal with these types of
offences.
She spoke about Multi-Attribute Utility Technology (MAUT)
based on five main principles; to identify what was the
effectiveness of the CEU; to identify stakeholders; to ask
those stakeholders what they believed the attributes of the
programme were and; to identify the real importance of the
attributes.
She said that effective evaluation was possible. but we
should go slowly and carefully. A long-term view was required
with TACT offenders who were often on long licences and
long sentences. We needed to ensure evaluation was built
into programme design.
20 21

Front Line Experiences: Working with Violent Extremist Offenders in Prison
and the Community
Simon Cornwall, Central Extremism Unit, London Probation Trust
Phil Wragg, Governor of HMP Belmarsh High Security Estate
Simon Cornwall said that in 2006 the Home Office produced
documentation for Parliament called Contest, which had
been the strategy for counter terrorism for the UK in four
aspects:
Prevent;
Pursue;
Protect;
Prepare.
The probation services main goal was through Prevent.
He said LPT was a key stakeholder on the agenda and the
role of MAPPA was very important.
In July 2008 LPT wrote a report on the need to work with
this type of offender and to identify gaps in service delivery
and deliver best practice. The primary objective for LPT
was to build its capacity to meet demand and it started to
introduce the Central Extremism Unit (CEU).
The objectives were to:
Co-ordinate LPT activity, to have a central place where
people could get information and where other agencies
could get information about offenders;
Provide a consistent capability to LPT to support the
work of offender managers.
Guidance and training was developed for operational staff
and, working with NOMS, an assessment framework was
developed.
One of the most important jobs was to develop community
links with third sector organisations, which could support
the work they were doing.
By June 2009 the unit was up and running with four staff.
The main tasks identified were to set up a database
tracking all TACT offenders. This was done nationally and
also in London, so offender managers and other agencies
could find out where individuals were in the criminal justice
system.
He said MAPPA (Multi Agency Public Protection
Arrangements) were a very important part of the work they
did.
Sourcing and managing interventions had also been very
important. They currently worked with about eight highly
skilled, very motivated groups.
Sharing of information had been a constant issue. This had
now improved.
The first year was spent building links and sharing
information with police and prisons.
In the second year the work expanded to take in other
extremist offenders and those who had an ideological or
political agenda. They supported the work of nine offender
managers working with offenders not convicted of TACT
offences, but who were vulnerable and showing signs of
being ideologically driven.
They have delivered six three-day training events to nearly
100 offender managers and offender supervisors from
within prisons, which had been very successful.
They had also held practitioner forums, where offender
managers could get together and talk about what they had
been doing, the negatives and positives, so that they could
learn from each others experiences.
Phil Wragg said that after The London bombings, on 7th
July 2005,(7/7) Belmarsh received a new type of prisoner
who was willing to use suicide tactics.
He said the initial thoughts were around how they could
deal with the exceptional risk - these people were to be
considered as exceptional risk Category A and provided
with the highest level of security.
Staff tension and absenteeism rose because staff were
worried about who and what they were dealing with. Stress
levels among staff spiralled upwards and it was very clear
that their understanding of Islam was limited, but that it was
being influenced by the media coverage.
The management of that anxiety was a massive challenge.
There was a plethora of security reports being submitted
by staff on a daily basis, because people were reporting
things they thought were occurring rather than were
actually occurring.
He spoke about how the situation had evolved.
More prisoners were being sent to custody who had a terror
tag related to them. They were unable to keep up with the
level of resource that they thought was required, because
of the number of prisoners coming in.
The media and the political interest remained at fever
pitch.
However, the management team grew more comfortable
with decisions and that allowed them to get into a defensible
decision making position. They began to believe in what
they were doing and therefore able to defend themselves.
Staff training became a priority. It was clear staff did not
know about the Islamic faith, they didnt know how people
practised their faith.
The Imam in the establishment was pivotal in guiding and
smoothing relations. He was able to confirm to staff and
management what was right, wrong and inappropriate.
It was important that the offenders who wanted to practice
their faith could see that all faiths were treated equally.
Much of what had been done at Belmarsh and in the
prison service would not have been possible without joint
working.
He said that for the future it was about normalising the
perceived threat posed by extremist prisoners and applying
existing policies robustly.
He said that confidence in the policy and support from both
the centre and ministers was crucial to empower people
like him to manage effectively.
Staff training and engagement was absolutely imperative
and remained so.
22 23

Judith Hooper, Camden Public Protection Unit, London Probation Trust and Delroy
Williams, Probation Officer, London Probation Trust
Psychologist, Penitentiary Institution of Alama, SGIP
It was said that at the end of 2007 they
had seven inmates connected to the bombings in 2004. It
was the first time the prison had had this profile of inmate
so initially they were in an isolation unit. They were kept in
individual cells and couldn t take part in any kind of activity.
Their daily life was four hours in the yard and the rest of the
time in the cell.
Then the prison created a programme of multi-cultural
integration. The therapy sessions were in groups and the
inmates voluntarily signed up to it.
Group sessions were held two hours a week but there were
also individual sessions with each inmate and in that time
they discussed political and religious ideology and debates
discussing tolerance, co-existence and integration.
and they had the opportunity of taking part in activities not
just in the module but also outside the module.
On a personal level they found that they could take part
in activities provided by the prison, they could have more
social relationships and their relationship with the staff
improved considerably.
This had all taken place within three years of working.
Changes did not take place immediately. She said the
main aim was multi-cultural integration and, through their
experiences over the three years, they had realised it was
very important to take an active part, rather than being
passive.
Judith Hooper explained they had been working with this
group of offenders for around two years. As probation
officers their primary objective was public protection,
in order to do that they had to be able to conduct risk
assessments and risk management plans.
Delroy Williams gave case studies on four offenders they
were working with.
He explained how they first came into contact and explained
that probation could submit pre-sentence reports about an
offender and make a sentence report recommendation.
Six months before an offender was released from prison
they arranged a MAPPA meeting to formulate a risk
management plan. They used licence conditions to mitigate
risks such as residence, curfew and not being allowed to
apply for travel documents.
Judith said the most important things when they started
working with the offenders were:
Knowledge of the offence;
Making relationships with the family and significant
others;
Previous criminality;
The place of Islam/religion in their life;
The relationship with Probation.
They needed to create a legitimate relationship with
the people they worked with. This was not necessarily
consequence free; there had to be clear boundaries and
expectations.
In the cases they had supervised they had co-worked
together. It was important to balance the ethnicity, age and
gender of people working together.
By co-working you were able to provide continuity in
relationships, for example if one was on leave there was
always someone there who was recognisable to the
offender.
How to create a legitimate relationship:
Co-working;
Create a safe environment to talk about politics and
religion;
Amman message;
Doha Debates;
Books;
Newspapers;
Current affairs;
History of certain areas;
Knowledge of culture;
Common sense approach;
Do not label;
Use third parties;
Time;
Offer choices;
Questions from the floor:
Q1. A delegate asked about the fact that the probation
officers had to write reports and that the offender knew this.
Did this create a difficulty in the relationship approach?
Judith said they were very transparent about what they did.
When they did assessments on offenders they told them
what they were and why they did them. She added that
it was incredibly important not to be secretive about what
they did.
Delroy added that the offender had the chance to see the
report, so everything that they put in the report they needed
to be able to justify.
They weren t trying to convince the inmates of certain
values and they did not want to impose any ideology on
them - firstly because it was not ethical and secondly
because it was not effective either.
The idea of the programme was to defend the intrinsic
values that had to be supported by every individual, such
as taking other people and their opinions into account.
During the programme they saw changes in attitudes.
There were high levels of interest to take part in these
programmes.
They examined their situation again and tried to integrate
them with the other inmates within their unit, to increase
the places where they could have their activities and to
decrease the amount of time they spent in their cells.
A further programme took place, which the inmates
again signed up for voluntarily. The programme included
sessions with 10 inmates, not just by themselves but other
inmates as well. They could take part in a bigger number
of activities. They wanted them to understand the role
that thoughts played and that they had an effect on our
feelings and behaviour. They also wanted to help them to
recognise and stress emotions and to recognise them not
just in themselves but also in others and be able to discuss
them.
Finally they had a module which aimed to help the inmates
to establish healthy habits.
Their behaviour improved amazingly and the prison decided
to go a step further. They decided to integrate them in a
bigger group of inmates which meant they were going to
have a normal regime.
The inmates had to voluntarily sign a behaviour contract
24 25

Future Cooperation: Creating Sustainable Partnerships and Networks
Closing Remarks
Steve Pitts, Head of NOMS International
Relations and External Programmes
Linda Pizani-Williams
Linda Pizani-Williams delivered the findings from the table
top exercise done the previous day, where delegates were
asked to give ideas for organisational issues, interagency
issues, offender manager issues and practitioner issues.
Issues to be tackled
Practitioner:
Knowledge, skills and confidence;
Risk assessment;
Offender manager relationship engagement skills.
Interagency
Steve Pitts explained the role of his team was to identify
opportunities to learn from each other, within the UK across
sectors, and also opportunities to learn internationally. It
was also about looking for external funding to support that
learning and to use the funding for projects such as RIRP
and TPVR to be able to put on conferences such as this
one.
Prison and probation had not, in his view, been sufficiently
high priority on EC funding priority lists and they were
working to improve that.
He spoke of the European funding programme and different
grants and funding streams available.
He said in terms of accessing funds:
Start with the needs, not with the funding stream;
Select the right partners;
Competitive need bid writing and project management
expertise;
Networks can help identify policy needs.
Clear definition of roles, responsibilities and skills;
Transparency;
Working with not against each other;
Shared protocols and knowledge base;
Information sharing;
Risk ownership;
Outcome measures.
Offender Manager
Development of a tool kit;
Specialist knowledge.
Areas for future cooperation
This session concluded with an exercise for each table to
discuss priority areas for co-operation for the future:
Exchange of best practice;
Find out what works;
User voice;
Evidence base of theoretical models;
Models of inter-agency co-operation for risk assessment
and joint management and training;
Clarity of terminology, communication and
documentation and evidence base;
Multi-agency training to support collaboration;
To share what does not work;
Staff exchanges and work shadowing;
Better understanding of push and pull factors across
different extremism pathways;
Richard Pickering said there had been a range of agencies,
groups and partners at the conference. It had been a
stimulating series of conversations and he hoped that
individually and collectively, delegates had got what they
wanted from those conversations.
He said it had been challenging. We had looked at issues
of risk, evidence base, mainstreaming. We had spoken of
the fragility and vulnerability of this work, the difficulties in
accessing funding, the difficulties of describing this work in
a changing political environment and the challenges were
clear.
He thanked the practitioners of the projects involved, the
speakers, and the venue and expressed his gratitude to
the project team for their hard work.
Stephen Moran said we had got through a huge amount
of work in three days. The conference had highlighted the
real benefits of working internationally and the opportunity
for networking. He said he had been very impressed by
the positive, enthusiastic contributions from speakers and
delegates and the passion they had for working to prevent
radicalisation.
He extended his thanks to the organising team who he said
had done a fantastic job.
He said he was the chair of the TPVR and RIRP project
boards and he was very grateful to the project board
members for their contributions. The final project board
meetings had been arranged for December and it had
been agreed that these meetings would take the form of
evaluation days, in order to review the projects as a whole
and to pick up on the points raised at the conference, to
take them forward.
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Workshop 1 Multi agency approaches to working with violent extremists
Chaired by Al Reid, Head of Dangerous Offenders
Section, NOMS
Ian Collins, Detective Sergeant, Metropolitan Police
Simon Cornwall, Central Extremism Unit, London
Probation Trust
Touda El Ouargui, Security Adviser, Denmark
In this workshop there were three presentations focusing in
particular on the importance of multi-agency approaches to
violent extremism and radicalisation as well as the problems,
advantages and issues that might be encountered with this
approach. The workshop also aimed to consider European
approaches to multi-agency work.
Touda El Ouargui from the Danish Security and Intelligence
Service outlined the organisational and operational
structures of the security service. She focused on the
main partners that the organisation worked with as
part of a multi-agency approach to preventing violent
extremism and radicalisation. In particular the security
service concentrated on engagement in seven key areas.
These areas of engagement included schools and higher
education; the prison and probation service; government
ministries; faith communities; representatives from local
communities; NGOs; and, bilateral contacts.
Simon Cornwall from the Central Extremism Unit (CEU)
from London Probation Trust spoke about the work of his
unit developed in mid 2008 and focused on developing
a comprehensive strategy for coordinating, tracking and
managing terrorist offenders. The core objectives of the
CEU were to coordinate LPTs activities and build a virtual
team and intervention in each London Borough; to develop
guidance and training for operational staff; to help develop
assessment frameworks and interventions; to deliver
objectives for the Officer for Security and Counter Terrorism
and the London Director of Offender Management; and, to
develop community links with third sector organisations.
Detective Sergeant Ian Collins from the Metropolitan Police
spoke about the prisoner release team, which is responsible
for assisting LPT in the management of terrorist offenders
and those convicted out of counter terrorism operations.
The team managed those offenders subject to Notification
Orders when the licence had expired and assisted LPT
with intelligence sharing in relation to other offenders
where appropriate.
The Metropolitan Police was a responsible authority under
the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA)
and had a statutory duty to support the Probation Service
in the management of dangerous offenders. The Prisoner
Release Team worked closely with LPTs CEU. Excellent
relationships had been developed between LPT and
SO15 to enable the appropriate police support and flow of
information between the agencies. The Prisoner Release
Team had the following objectives to support MAPPA:
Attend MAPPA pre-release meetings to;
Provide an intelligence report;
Provide guidance on proposed licence conditions;
Assume ownership of actions to be undertaken by
police;
Assist in minimising the ability for offenders to re-offend,
prevent vulnerability and support rehabilitation;
Provide a bespoke police response regarding
reoffending and licence breaches.
The advantages of this were to provide an effective
and immediate exchange of information; to provide an
expedient police response when investigation was required;
and to provide excellent police support for offenders by
responding to Duty of Care issues. The disadvantages
were to interpersonal relationships between agency
employees; sharing information with non-vetted London
Probation Trust and Prison Service employees (Statutory
obligations); and, sensitive operational information versus
risk management.
Questions
Is there any national co-ordination of multi-agency cooperation?
MAPPA arrangements are governed by national rules/
regulations/guidance.
LPT however, is unique in having a specialist probation unit
- the CEU - due to the number of cases
How do you compile a community risk assessment?
IC -Two pilots are ongoing, one by NOMS and another by
the MET - useful work is being undertaken.
SC - while OASys is the risk main tool for probation use,
NOMS is piloting a new risk assessment tool centrally
for these offenders and if successful it will be rolled out
nationally.
UK release arrangements seem excellent - are they
transferable systems and might they have lessons for other
EU countries? & (2) - what are the re-conviction rates?
(1) UK MAPPA arrangements and processes are obviously
specific to our needs and situation though the principles
and structure might be applicable. Information sharing is
still an ongoing issue between agencies in these particular
cases, but we have made great progress on this matter
and will continue doing so.
(2) No re-offending of TACT and TACT-related offenders
on licence This is an indication of good multi-agency
working, in addition to other factors. Of 12 offenders on
licence, there has been no re-offending, although there
has been a breach on one for non-compliance with their
licence conditions.
Where are the community groups in all of this?
While they dont have a place at MAPPA as such, unless
invited, their views and assessments of individuals are
taken into account where relevant.
SC & IC both stressed that they do not have the legitimacy
to work with an offenders faith/belief aspects, but
community groups and Imams do - so they have a key role
in working with probation and prisons with regards to TACT
offenders.
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Workshop 2
Staff training for working with violent extremists and terrorist
offenders
Workshop 3 - Working with Community Organisations for Public Protection
and Reintegration
Chaired by Rosie Hanna, Head of NOMS Extremism
Unit
Maggie Bolger, Head of Curriculum Development ,
NOMS
Liz Dixon, Hate Crime Coordinator, London Probation
Trust
Head of Services for Intervention
and Monitoring, Spanish Penitentiary Service
The workshop aimed to discuss how organisations
across Europe could identify staff training needs and outline
how these needs could be met and training implemented.
The workshop also focused on the similarity and differences
concerning the needs of prison and probation staff.
Maggie Bolger said NOMS had extensive experience in
managing violent extremists and terrorist offenders. In 2008
the NOMS Extremism Programme Board commissioned a
TNA to identify staff awareness and confidence in handling/
managing violent extremist prisoners. The findings
demonstrated that staff had gaps in their knowledge of faith
issues; that staff did not engage and communicate enough
with prisoners; and that staff confidence was low and
they were afraid to challenge offenders because of race,
religion, and diversity issues. It was also found that prison
staff had very different needs to that of probation staff and
that overall a new approach was required to the one that
had previously been used to handle IRA prisoners.
When handling violent extremist and terrorist offenders it
was found that the offenders often disrespected the prison
Imam. They also had contempt and intolerance for other
Muslim offenders who did not share in their interpretation
of Islam, as well as all non Muslim prisoners. They were
involved in bullying, intimidation and targeting of vulnerable
prisoners and changed their appearance and held
meetings with fellow offenders without permission. They
also challenged staff and there was a noticeable increase
in racial complaints and discipline issues.
In response to these issues NOMS created an awareness
training package for staff. An Expert Advisory Group was
formed to assist in the development of this training package
and in 2010 a qualitative and quantitative evaluation was
undertaken. To date, approximately 5,000 staff had attended
and feedback had been very positive.
This programme had been extended to form part of the
foundation training for new entrant prison officers. NOMS
was also looking to establish joint training with prison and
probation staff.
Liz Dixon’s presentation focused on the work the LPT
had undertaken. This began when probation staff working
with offenders convicted under the Terrorism Act 2006
requested help. These probation staff had to work with
uncertain risks and new notions of risks. They had to
familiarise themselves with new issues regarding violent
extremism and the Criminal Justice System. They had to
work with new legislation, licence conditions and policies,
with new partners (such as the Office for Security and
Counter Terrorism in the Home Office), and also with those
who had been radicalised. Staff expressed an anxiety of
feeling overwhelmed and nervous, especially as the issue
of terrorism had high risk factors and a high media profile.
They needed to develop confidence in a professional
capacity over issues such as whether they should separate
offenders or allow them access to interventions.
LPT set up a practitioner forum and drew on frontline
practitioners’ experiences. LPT also developed a great
number of working relationships, commissioned research
and drew on learning from previous work with hate crime
offenders. This led to the development of a staff training
programme, which is delivered to prison and probation
staff.
In his presentation it was highlighted that
in Spain there was not a probation system as there was
in the United Kingdom. There were currently 56 violent
extremist and terrorist offenders held in Spanish prisons.
All were foreign nationals who would be deported on
completion of their sentence and so there was little work
on how to reintegrate them into Spanish society. The focus
of Spanish intervention programmes was to prevent the
spread of radicalisation within the prison system. The issues
presented by Islamist violence was a new phenomenon in
Spain as the traditional challenge had come from extreme
left wing groups and ETA.
Spain had developed extensive training for the staff working
with violent extremists and terrorists. These programmes
were developed in 1989 and were originally geared towards
handling ETA terrorists. These programmes were run by
academics, with one of the key aims being to train prison
staff to detect and counter the radicalisation process.
Dealing with the problem of radicalisation was made all
the harder in the immediate period after the March 2004
bombings, as there was no legislation to convict terrorists
for plotting or inciting violence. There was only legislation to
deal with offenders who had already committed a terrorist
act. This had now changed and 147 people were currently
held who had been convicted of plots and incitement to
violent terrorist acts. These offenders were spread across
57 prisons and were put through intervention programmes.
Seven different programmes were used, each of which
lasted 30 hours. Since 2010 Spain had been forced to scale
back these programmes due to budget cuts. In response
they had moved staff between prisons to spread expert
knowledge, as well as developing a staff training manual
and an ‘open university’style course for staff.
Chaired by Sara Robinson, Assistant Chief Officer (Central
Extremism Unit), London Probation Trust
Alyas Karmani, Director of STREET
Leo Jansen, Dutch National Agency for Correctional
Institutions
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson, Director of SIRAAT
Sara Robinson asked how did the statutory sector work with
community groups - what were the issues and its value?
Leo Jansen gave an outline of the political situation in Holland
at the moment because it showed how dynamic, changing
and politically sensitive this area of work continued to be.
The Netherlands had a 25% reduction in their prison
population - why? It mirrored the decrease across Europe,
there was better work with drug addicts in the Netherlands,
a system of Safe Houses and a wider-range of non-custodial
sentences available.
Prisons in the Netherlands had 14 places in two different
prisons for violent extremist offenders but only currently filled
four of these places.
Initiatives had been started in this area:
A prison meeting would be held next month with governors
and experts
Pamphlets had been sent to all prison staff about the issue
- guidance on how to behave towards Muslim prisoners
Progress was being made in a planned, purposeful manner.
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson described SIRAAT s work in
prisons in and outside London, through their Strategic Islamic
Research Team .
They had been doing work for 17-20 years - not just since
7/7, though since then more focus had been on home-grown
terrorists.
SIRRAT used 7 risk factors - including circle of change,
they used a mentoring approach, a research evidence base
and their value as an organisation rested in their knowledge
base.
They used their knowledge of faith (and the polemic/dialectic
of Islam) and credibility with TACT/violent extremist/Muslim
prisoners, based on their careful selection of staff, using age
and experience, creating genuine trust and understanding
between their workers and prisoners.
Alyas Karmani described the role of STREET, an NGO in the
UK, working with Muslim offenders in the community and
released TACT prisoners. He acknowledged that it might
appear to be a big leap for statutory agencies to use NGOs
to work with this group, but that they added value to the
task of protecting the public through their credibility with
this offender group, the range of skills and knowledge they
brought with them. NGOs shared similar backgrounds to the
violent extremist offenders they worked with. They were close
to the offenders in age often. They understood the offenders
lives and how to change their beliefs and values and then
their behaviour.
NGOs could reach hard to reach communities with
backgrounds from Pakistan, East Asia, the Caribbean, Horn
of Africa & converts.
NGOs had an important place at the table to assist with the
protection of the public
Questions
We have a long way to go in developing our links with Muslim
community groups in this work, such as we have heard is
going on in the UK - how do we go about it?
Abdul Rahmaan Anderson suggested approaching mosques/
Imams - they need to speak with you and they may develop
their capacity in this area. You may we surprised at their
reactions. Using mentoring via mosques/community groups
can be key.
How do we go about it and can you also assist with exit for
gang members with a faith link?
Alyas Karmani Yes, just build up a relationship with your
community groups and you will see that they have the latent
capability and interest in working with offenders from their
community.
Do your workers and other statutory workers have to be Muslim
to work successfully with this type of offender/prisoner?
Alyas Karmani - Certainly not, teams with mixed faiths amongst
the workers are best. It s important that non-Muslims work
with Muslims and that it is not implied that same faith worker
and offender is the best or only model. Workers do need an
understanding of faith issues to work at all with offenders
from other faith groups but it should not be the case that it
is exclusive. A genuine concern for the individual is treating
them with respect and professionalism as key issues. But,
to engage at a deep level about faith issues and doctrine,
someone with that knowledge will probably only be a Muslim
and/or an Imam.
Not all the NGOs here today are based in mosques or have
Imams involved - mosques should be approached to assist
with doctrinal issues and for their community links.
Alyas Karmani - Some mosques can be conservative
institutions who shy away from this area of working with
offenders at all - so take the point but there can be difficulties
here.
Abdul Raahman Anderson added that SIRAAT worked with a
non-Muslim psychologist.
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Workshop 4: Models of Working with
Radical Right Wing and Politically
Motivated Offenders
Chaired by Dr Harald Weilnbock, Violence Prevention
Network and Professor of the University of Zurich
Judy Korn, Director of the Violence Prevention
Network
Robert Örell, Director of Exit Sweden
Robert Örell is manager at the Swedish Exit, part of
Fryshusets youth centres social projects. He has personal
experiences of leaving an extremist environment and has
worked at Exit for eight years.
He spoke about his personal experiences and also about
Exit s work, which is based on training and consultation to
professionals, family support for relatives of individuals in
extremist environments and client support for disengaged
extremists.
He said Exit supported the individuals who may be involved
in this activity, giving them a place to talk, they supported
the family while the individual may be making the decision
to leave the extremist group.
Judy Korn is co-founder and manager of the Violence
Prevention Network. VPN gets involved after an individual
has made the decision to leave the group they belong to,
and do not get involved at just a thinking stage.
With support from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the
European Union
European Commission - Directorate-General Home Affairs.
This publication reflects the views only of the presenters and participants, and the European Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein
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