Dealing With Radicalised Youth Offenders: The Development and Implementation of a Youth-Specific Framework

Background: In 2018 in the Australian State of New South Wales, a specialist Countering Violent Extremism Unit was established in the youth criminal justice system. This was in direct response to a number of youth below the age of 18 who have been charged for terrorism offences and identified as involved in violent extremist acts. This youth-specific framework was the first of its kind in Australia. It was designed to provide multidisciplinary practitioner-based approaches for the early-identification, diversion, and disengagement of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Aims: This paper will explore the experiences and lessons learned by the Youth Justice New South Wales Countering Violent Extremism Unit. It will discuss the relevance of youth radicalisation within Australia's evolving national security climate. This includes emerging trends in relation to youth radicalisation to varied violent extremist ideologies. This paper will explore the specialist approach adopted for preventing and countering violent extremism through the identification, assessment, and case management of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Implications: The Youth Justice New South Wales experience indicates that youth criminal justice settings can be designed to tackle the challenges posed by at-risk and radicalised youth. The practitioner experience canvassed in this paper highlights that a pluralistic and non-punitive approach to supervision, client-focused assessment and case management processes, and widespread resourcing of multidisciplinary practitioners and programs can be used to account for developmental and psychosocial vulnerabilities in addition to violent extremism risk factors amongst youth offenders. These approaches should be supplemented by youth-specific countering violent extremism practitioner expertise, and a range of violent extremism case management and risk assessment measures.

The Brides of Boko Haram: Economic Shocks, Marriage Practices, and Insurgency in Nigeria

Marriage markets in rural Nigeria are characterised by bride price and polygamy. These customs may diminish marriage prospects for young men, causing them to join militant groups. Using an instrumental variables strategy, I find that marriage inequality increases civil conflict in the Boko Haram insurgency. To generate exogenous shocks to the marriage market, I exploit the fact that young women delay marriage in response to favourable pre-marital economic conditions, which increases marriage inequality primarily in polygamous villages. The same shocks that increase marriage inequality and extremist violence also lead women to marry fewer and richer husbands, generate higher average marriage expenditures, and increase insurgent abductions. The results shed light on the marriage market as an important driver of violent extremism.

Some Critical Notes on Sri Lankan Muslim Religious Identity Formation, Conservatism, and Violent Extremism

A new wave of attacks by Sinhala-Buddhist extremist elements against the Muslim community in Sri Lanka started following the brutal end of the ethnic civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sinhala-Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka security forces in 2009. Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in 2019 by some Muslims polarized Sri Lanka and contributed to the compromise of the country’s security. Sri Lankan Muslims often claim they are a peaceful community and thus have no serious interests in violent mobilization. But the evidence would basically contradict Muslims’ claim of a peace-loving community. The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks did not take place in any vacuum. This paper will situate some key developments in the violent mobilization of Sri Lanka during the war against the LTTE. The primary goal of such an attempt is to read the growing religious conservative and violent trends among Muslims between 1977 and 2009. In understanding the growing religious conservative trends, an understanding is attempted to situate a later propensity for violence within the community that would manifest itself with the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. Interviews were conducted with members of the Islamic Dawah organizations and Muslim youth who were formerly associated with violent groups in the Eastern Province to understand the ground reality. The period of 1977–2009 is important as the rise of religious conservatist influences in Sri Lanka mirrors the global transnational influences of Iran and Middle East Petro Dollars, especially Saudi Arabia. The article draws mainly on secondary sources. But to gain a better understanding of the ground reality, we spoke to a few Eastern Muslims between July 2016 and September 2021 at regular intervals.

Fighting Violent Extremism With Narrative Intervention: Evidence From a Field Experiment in West Africa

Violent extremism is one of the major challenges of our time. A cluster-randomized controlled trial with two arms (treatment vs. control) conducted in 132 villages in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso ( N = 2,904 participants) examined whether a narrative intervention in the format of a radio drama can shift behavioral intentions, beliefs, and attitudes in contexts of violent extremism. Individuals in intervention villages participated in weekly listening sessions to the radio drama (6 months’ content) over 12 weeks. Compared with the control condition, the narrative intervention reduced justification of violence, increased behavioral intentions to collaborate with the police, and increased prioritization of addressing violent extremism. The intervention did not influence beliefs about or attitudes toward the police (e.g., trust, fairness) or beliefs about police–community collaboration. Content analysis of the narrative intervention and participants’ reception and discussion of the intervention provide insights on the processes driving the intervention’s influence.

Risk Assessment—the Key to More Security? Factors, Tools, and Practices in Dealing with Extremist Individuals

In recent years, risk assessments for violent extremism have attracted great interest from both scholars and practitioners, and many assessment tools have been developed. After a critical review of this development, the paper examines differences and similarities between the indicators of various violent extremist risk assessment tools and checklists. Based on an interview study with 34 experts in the field of Counter Violent Extremism and 24 (formerly) radicalized persons from the right-wing radical and Salafi-Jihadist spectrum, risk factors were identified and the findings merged and compared with already existing risk assessment tools. The paper will present results especially regarding the risk signals’ occurrence and applicability in the German context. One key finding is that existing assessment tools insufficiently take into account personal contacts in the radicalization process. Thus, the paper—based on the results of a social network analysis—draws attention to the potential and importance of networks. The paper concludes by outlining the potential of risk assessment, suggesting improvements, and raising awareness of the limits and deficits of these tools. The paper thus scientifically addresses the challenge of more security through efficient risk assessment and management. It offers a list of radicalization process characteristics (ARISNA: Assessment of Radicalized Individuals including Social Network Analysis), which is designed to help users analyze the risk of radicalization based on concrete traits of a person and their environment.

Violent Extremism and the Politics of Education in Pakistan

Pakistan is depicted as a victim as well as a sponsor of terrorism. The reason behind this characterisation is that Pakistan, since its inception in 1947, has experienced multifaceted violence, ranging from ethnic insurgencies to sectarian violence. At the same time, it has been blamed for fomenting violence in its neighbours. On the one hand, there have been anti-terrorism laws in place since the late 1990s; on the other, there is an Islamised public sphere that provides fecund soil for violent extremists to thrive. The questions to be addressed here are: What kinds of anti-terrorism laws exist in Pakistan and how effective are they against terrorism? What is the role of the state-managed curriculum in providing a conducive environment for the growth of violent extremism? This research appeals to the “garrison state” theory, which explains how “the specialists on violence” control every aspect of the state, complemented by the concept of “fragmented hegemony,” which explains how the seemingly corrupt multiple sites of power help the state maintain its hegemony over society.