CONFERENCE REPORT. European Union Projects Reducing Influences that Radicalise Prisoners and Towards Preventing Violent Radicalisation

Transcription

1 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

2 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

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 3 4 5

4 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

5 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: London Probation Trust the lead partner and project lead CEP the European Organisation for Probation in Europe NOMS Stockwell Green Community Services 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 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

6 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 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

7 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 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 SGCS started programmes called SEED and PROSEED. They were evaluated in 2003 and put in place very effectively in 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

8 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 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 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

9 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 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

10 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 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.

11 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

12 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

13 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 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 couldnt 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 werent 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

14 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

15 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

16 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 SIRAATs work in prisons in and outside London, through their Strategic Islamic Research Team. They had been doing work for 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. Its 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

17 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 Exits 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 32 33

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