Deradicalization means countering new bad influences from both third parties and former offenders. It also, maybe chiefly, means prevention. Although the word prevention is usually associated with the idea that we can keep a person from committing wrong in the first place.

We ought to be reluctant to using the words primary and secondary, because the people subject to deradicalization efforts are known to have committed extremist acts. We should instead label preventative intervention after extremist acts have been committed ‘Post-Extremism Prevention.’

Post-Extremism Prevention does not imply dehumanizing a person, as dehumanizing will lead to adverse reactions on his or her part, whereas intervention would then be part of the problem. But we should also keep the people safe and thus be very watchful and cognizant of latent wrong.

Luckily, in modern society, prison conditions are good enough to provide for humane and valuing treatment while also challenging wrongful acts. On a different note, normal community engagement, similarly, needs to question wrongful acts, linked to bad intentions, but can provide for more solid foundations allowing a person to lead a good and productive life – where there is but little third-party dissonance.

Thorsten Koch, MA, PgDip
December 2019

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http://www.no2extremism.net

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