Practical Guide of Assessment of Disengagement from Jihadist Violent Extremism: Indicators of deradicalization

Abstract

Structured professional judgement tools were specifically created to measure risk related to violent extremism. But there is no instrument that measures disengagement and deradicalization program. The result of an action research realized in parallel of the follow-up of 450 French jihadists enabled the creation of a trial of a specialized protocol, named NOORAPPLI 3D[1]. It is intended for professionals who take charge of jihadists. Its main aim is to measure how disengagement/deradicalization programs manage to change attitudes associated to violent extremism. It fills practitioners’ need of deepening in order to measure the exit of radicalization and to fight recidivism. This practical guide helps professionals to consider the meaning of the radicalized individual’s engagement (engagement motives with promises of a better world and/or self), to detect his needs which were compensated by the radical discourse (psychological, socio-political…), to evaluate his level of “paranoid perspective” (rigid and persecuting emotional dimension), his level of “socialization in terrorism” (relational dimension) and his level of adhesion to the utopia of a perfect world with divine law (ideological dimension) as well as the evolution of the cognitive change provoked by these three dimensions (dichotomic thought causing an inversion of the perpetrator/victim status and the dehumanisation of victims). This article aims at submitting to critics this trial of exit of jihadist radicalization protocol. It presents a method which led to the creation of items allowing a follow-up individual to be replaced in his own trajectory of radicalization. NOORAPPLI 3D relies on results of a scientific research on contemporary jihadism but incorporates them transversely, to help professionals to measure concretely follow-up individuals, on the basis of objective facts and not according to subjective representations nor principled positions. NOORAPPLI 3D items are organized into three chapters corresponding to the three dimensions of the radicalization process (emotional, relational, ideological). For each of these items, four levels of answers are proposed. The professional will check the closest answer to the concerned subject’s situation. The items are formulated so that the professional will gather precise information on each matter: either after a discussion or by the observation of the radicalized individual’s behaviour, with a risk of dissimulation. The following items must be adapted and experimented. It will also be necessary to adapt them to help professionals of other countries because they are built upon the exit of radicalization of French jihadists who were largely recruited by French extremist leaders in the French language and tested by teams of French professionals within and outside prisons. [1] NOOR means Light in Arabic. It also stands for “Neutralizing Online and Offline Radicalization”. 3D refers to the three evaluated dimensions leading to an emotional, relational or ideological cognitive change.