Abstract
In Western societies, radicalisation has grown and emerged as a point of interest through academia, law enforcement and the judicial system. This interest has sparked a series of contemporary debates surrounding what prevention methods are deemed most appropriate and should be adopted to tackle radicalisation as a nuanced factor within the judicial sector. This chapter explores this concept through a historical process looking at the emergence of radicalisation and its characteristics from the perspectives of different academic theories. Through an explorative literature and law review, the chapter highlights the most influential socio-psychological theorists in understanding radicalisation, risk management tools and shaping prevention methods to date. What unearths from this discussion is the overlapping of the ageing model of crime prevention through the separation of criminology from jurisprudence with a contemporary model which focuses on risk assessments, surveillance, predictive profiling, administrative practices and the incline of multi-agency public-private partnerships. Through critical analysis, this nuanced prevention/deradicalisation model alongside its methods, projects and tools is comparatively discussed in how it is used by European countries specifically for far-right threats. It also studies debates within academia which assesses their effectiveness both intrinsically and extrinsically for criminal and intelligence analysts, societal members and the overall European society. The analysis highlights the modern intertwining of police and judicial methods of prevention, thus creating a multi-agency approach. It also uncovers a number of issues with the new methods including racial profiling, human rights misconceptions, obtrusiveness of surveillance societies, stretching of police resources and the differences between European countries in tackling extremism, which combined are tarnishing the trust and relationship between the judicial sector and the wider public. In concluding discussions the chapter reflects upon the transition of contemporary prevent strategies and how Western strategies into security and prevention can be understood through: security priorities, hybrid policing models between intelligence services and LEAs, the de-juridicalisation of prevention processes and public-private cooperation.
This research was funded by the DG Justice, project ‘J-S.A.F.E. Judicial Strategy Against all Forms of Violent Extremism in Prison’, in cooperation with the Italian Ministry of Justice, Department of Prison Administration, Triveneto Office.
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Notes
- 1.
Garland D. describes this process in his The Culture of Control. Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society , Chicago, University Press, 2001: ‘As recently as 1979, those involved in the business of crime control shared a common set of assumptions about the framework that shaped criminal justice and penal practices. There was a relatively settled, self-conscious, institutional field and the debates and disagreements that occurred operated within well-established boundaries. (…) Today, for better or for worse, we lack any such agreement, any settled culture, or any clear sense of the big picture. Policy development appears highly volatile, with an unprecedented amount of legislative activity, much dissension in the rank of practitioner groups, and a good deal of conflict between experts and politicians’ (Garland 2001: 4).
- 2.
‘It would be going too far to say that criminal justice suffered a “collapse” or a “breakdown” in the period after the mid-1970s, but there is no doubt that the institutional arrangements of penal-welfarism and, more generally, of modern criminal justice, were undermined and unsettled in these years’ (Garland 2001: 104).
- 3.
‘SCP is based upon the idea that crime is a rational decision (SCP theorists will then advance the concept of “rationality of irrationality” or “bounded rationality”), designed to weigh the risks and benefits for the offender, and how in the absence of effective controls, offenders will focus on suitable targets. Routine activity theory relies on the occurrence of three key characteristics: a motivated offender, a suitable victim, and a lack of control. Crime Pattern Theory, as developed by Pat and Paul Brantingham, is a complex way of explaining why crimes are committed in certain areas’ (Bianchi 2018: 14).
- 4.
‘The events of the late 1980s may have consigned Marx and Engels to the scrapheap of failed ideologies, but their description of capitalist modernity in the Communist Manifesto remains as true today as it ever was’ (Garland 2001: 79).
- 5.
‘Private prisons, victim impact statements, community notification laws, sentencing guidelines, electronic monitoring, punishment in the community, “quality of life” policing, restorative justice—these and dozens of other developments lead us into unfamiliar territory where the ideological lines are far from clear and where the old assumptions are an unreliable guide’ (Garland 2001: 4).
- 6.
‘Criminological theory is of little help in dealing with crime in the real world because it finds causes in distant factors, such as child rearing practices, genetic makeup, and psychological or social processes. These are mostly beyond the reach of everyday practice, and their combination is extremely complicated for those who want to understand crime, and do something about it’ (Clarke and Eck 2008).
- 7.
‘Primary crime prevention identifies conditions of the physical and social environment that provide opportunities for precipitate criminal acts. Here the objective of intervention is to alter those conditions so that crimes cannot occur. Secondary crime prevention engages in early identification of potential offenders and seeks to intervene in their lives in such a way that they never commit criminal violations. Tertiary crime prevention deals with actual offenders and involves intervention in their lives in such a fashion that they will not commit further offences’ (Brantingham and Faust 1976: 290).
- 8.
The New York Police Department (NYPD), Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat (NYPD 2007: 21), was the first linear predictive model aimed at detecting the emergence of radicalisation phenomena. We used this method in our Bianchi S., Jihadist Radicalisation in European Prisons: Experimental Project for the Identification of Jihadist Radicalisation in European Prisons, European Commission—Directorate General Justice Freedom and Security, CRYME JLS/2007/ISEC/551-2010; M. Sageman proposed a non-linear predictive model in 2007 in Radicalization of Global Islamist Terrorists, United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which was then adjusted in 2008 in his article ‘A Strategy for Fighting International Islamist Terrorists’, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618 (1), pp. 223–231. Taarnby developed a model in eight steps, analysing recruitment pre- and post-11/9 (Taarnby, M. (2003) Profiling Islamic Suicide Terrorists, a research report for the Danish Ministry of Justice. Danish Ministry of Justice, and (2005) Recruitment of Islamist Terrorists in Europe: Trends and Perspectives. Danish Ministry of Justice). In its study on al-Muhagirun Q. Wiktorowicz (2004), ‘Joining the Cause: Al-Muhajiroun and Radical Islam’, The Roots of Radical Islam, Department of International Studies, Rhodes College identifies four sequential processes. McCauley C. and Moskalenko S. (2008) ‘Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20 (3), pp. 415–433 have identified 12 ‘mechanisms’ of political radicalisation which operate across three levels: that of the individual, the group and the mass level. A pathway of suicide bombers, articulated in four steps, is offered by P. Gills (2007) ‘A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Suicide Bombing’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 1 (2), pp. 142–159, and 2008, ‘Suicide Bomber Pathways Among Islamic Militants’, Policing, 4 (2), pp. 412–422.
- 9.
GDAP 0384043 dated 14-11-2015, GDAP 0385582 dated 16-11-2015 and GDAP 0248805 dated 20-7-2016.
- 10.
- 11.
The legal settlement is available in: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/1211._stipulation_of_settlement_and_order_1.7.16_0.pdf
- 12.
D.P.R. 30 giugno 200, n. 230.
- 13.
Ministero della Giustizia-GDAP-0445731-2011, Circolare 3594/6044
- 14.
European Security Strategy-A secure Europe in a better World, Brussels, 12.12.2003, https://europa.eu/globalstrategy/en/european-security-strategy-secure-europe-better-world; The European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy, Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting, Brussels 1 December 2005, www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/87257.pdf; Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council—The EU Internal Security Strategy in Action: Five steps towards a more secure Europe (COM(2010) 673 final of 22.11.2010); Renewed European Union Internal Security Strategy Implementation Paper, Brussels, 14 July 2015, 10854/15; European Council, June 2016, Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe: A Global Strategy for the EU Foreign and Security Policy.
- 15.
- 16.
The first document is GDAP0093040 dd. 13-3-2015, following the initial EU strategy in the same year.
- 17.
‘In fact, it depends not only on subjective and objective assessments, but also on the logistical and security characteristics of the institute, on the personnel provided and on the availability of the vehicles, as well as on the confidential information held by the institute’s managers’ (GDAP-0445732-2011, Circolare 3594/6044: 17).
- 18.
- 19.
DL 20 febbraio 2017, n. 14, recante “Disposizioni urgenti in materia di sicurezza delle città” (in GU n. 42 del 20 febbraio 2017).
- 20.
DL 20 February 2017, n. 14, recante “urgent provisions on the safety of cities” (in GU n. 42 20 February 2017).
- 21.
NOMS HQ, National Probation Service, Managing Terrorist and Extremist Offenders in the Community, AI 13/2014- PI 10/2014.
- 22.
The Role of Religion in Exit Programmes and Religious Counselling in Prison and Probation Settings, Ex Post Paper, RAN Centre of Excellence, 10-11 October 2017, Madrid, available from: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we do/networks/radicalisation_awareness_network/about-ran/ran-p-and-p/docs/ran_pp_role_of_religion_in_exit_programmes_10-11_10_2017_en.pdf
- 23.
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22fulltext%22:[%22De%20Tommaso%22],%22itemid%22:[%22001-173433%22]
- 24.
MAUGERI, Preventive measures and cases of general danger: the European court condemns Italy for the lack of quality of the “law”, but a swallow does not make spring; VIGANÒ, The Court of Strasbourg takes a severe blow to the Italian discipline of personal prevention measures, in: www.penalecontemporaneo.it
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
More specifically Directive (UE) 2016/343 dated 9 March 2016, often recalled by rights activists.
- 31.
Paragraph 144. Please see also Mennitto c. Italia [GC], n. 33804/96, § 23, CEDU 2000 X; Micallef c. Malta [GC], n. 17056/06, § 74, CEDU 2009; e Boulois c. Lussemburgo [GC], n. 37575/04, § 90, CEDU 2012).
- 32.
- 33.
‘While Garland analyse the developments from the perspective of the dichotomy welfare/control, we prefer to consider the unbalanced evolution of institutional bodies in the light of the relations between executive powers/judicial powers/civil society or private sector. In our opinion, the real change from the seventieth is represented by the disproportionate role which politician assigned to executive agencies, like intelligence and LEAs, at the expenses of judges and prosecutors; (1) the extension of the security “field” (as defined by Garland) to sectors, traditionally not considered as part of the security competences; (2) the intrusion of private actors into the security scene. These relevant changes occurred within legal and institutional frameworks which maintained a certain degree of stability, therefore generating contradictions, procedural conflicts, inhomogeneous practices and policies and, last but not least, conflicts among citizens. To summarize, security became a battle field for politicians and media, with all the related consequences on the public opinion. What Garland defines as the new culture of control is not only a phenomenon resulting from the removal of security from the welfarist theories, but rather their merging with the advanced models of Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) in the form of prevention of terrorism’ (Bianchi 2018: 14).
- 34.
For the concept of ‘Global Governance’ please refer to: Yunker, G.A., The Idea of World Government: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century, New York, Routledge, 2011; Rosenau J.N., Czempiel E.-O., Governance without Government: Order and Chance in World politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992; Mazover M., Governing the World: History of an Idea, New York, Penguin, 2012; Cassese S., The Global Polity: Global Dimension of Democracy and the Rule of Law, Sevilla, Global Law Press, 2012.
- 35.
The UN Report of the Commission on Global Governance goes back to 1992 and was published in 1995 with the title Our Global Neighbourhood, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.
- 36.
The reference is the Global Administrative Law Project, which started in 2005, thanks to the researches of the New York University School of Law. The main concept was proposed by B. Kingsbury, N. Krisch and R.B. Stewart, The Emergence of Global Administrative Law, in: Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 68, n. 3-4, 2005.
- 37.
Bianchi S., 2017, Understand the dimensions of organized crime and terrorist networks for developing effective and efficient security solutions for first-line practitioners and professionals, in TAKEDOWN EU-Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 700688, D.2.4 Documentation of the OC/TN response approaches and policies.
- 38.
In 1998, at a symposium on the continuing political relevance of the peace of Westphalia, the former NATO secretary-general Solana pronounced a famous speech criticising ‘the original Westphalian order…the Westphalian system had its limits. For one, the principle of sovereignty it relied on also produced the basis for rivalry, not community of states; exclusion, not integration’ (Solana, Securing Peace in Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Symposium on the Political Relevance of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Munster 12 November 1998).
- 39.
On the evolution of preventive measures in Italy, please see Manna, Misure di Prevenzione: aspetti comparatistici e prospettive di riforma, QG, 1995, 2, 311 e sgg.; Guerrini-Mazza, Le Misure di Prevenzione-Profili sostanziali e processuali, Padova, 1996.
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Bianchi, S., Ladu, M., Bianchi, S. (2020). Radicalisation: No Prevention Without ‘Juridicalisation’. In: Akhgar, B., Wells, D., Blanco, J. (eds) Investigating Radicalization Trends. Security Informatics and Law Enforcement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25436-0_8
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