Abstract
In recent years, risk assessments for violent extremism have attracted great interest from both scholars and practitioners, and many assessment tools have been developed. After a critical review of this development, the paper examines differences and similarities between the indicators of various violent extremist risk assessment tools and checklists. Based on an interview study with 34 experts in the field of Counter Violent Extremism and 24 (formerly) radicalized persons from the right-wing radical and Salafi-Jihadist spectrum, risk factors were identified and the findings merged and compared with already existing risk assessment tools. The paper will present results especially regarding the risk signals’ occurrence and applicability in the German context. One key finding is that existing assessment tools insufficiently take into account personal contacts in the radicalization process. Thus, the paper—based on the results of a social network analysis—draws attention to the potential and importance of networks. The paper concludes by outlining the potential of risk assessment, suggesting improvements, and raising awareness of the limits and deficits of these tools. The paper thus scientifically addresses the challenge of more security through efficient risk assessment and management. It offers a list of radicalization process characteristics (ARISNA: Assessment of Radicalized Individuals including Social Network Analysis), which is designed to help users analyze the risk of radicalization based on concrete traits of a person and their environment.
Highlights
Radicalization is increasing around the world, in some cases leading to violent attacks
While the expert interviewees working on the area of religiously motivated radicalization and extremism significantly outnumber those working on the right-wing area (24 exclusively on religiously motivated vs. 6 exclusively on right-wing, three interviews on both phenomena, and one interviewee working independent of ideologies but referring to Islamist radicalization as well), this ratio was inverted with respect to interviews with radicalized persons; significantly more interviews were conducted with persons from the right-wing spectrum (87.5% vs. 12.5%)
The findings presented here are based on the analysis and comparison of already existing risk assessment tools as well as on a qualitative evaluation of our interviews conducted with experts and radicalized individuals
Summary
Radicalization is increasing around the world, in some cases leading to violent attacks. To study and prevent this phenomenon, a new area of research has emerged under the headline of (Violent) Extremist or Terrorist Risk Assessment. (computer-aided) tools have been developed, the risk indicators of which are derived ( methodologically) in different ways (cf Meyer, 2022); they are based, among other things, on literature analyses (“top-down,” see, e.g., VERA, Pressman, 2009), including “reviews of the available empirical studies and case experience” (see Meloy & Yakeley, 2014; for TRAP-18; see Meloy et al, 2012; Meloy et al, 2015; Meloy & Gill, 2016), on expert consultation (e.g., VERA-2, see Pressman & Flockton, 2012, VERA-2R, see Pressman et al, 2018, Sadowski et al, 2017 and EvIs, see Ullrich et al, 2019), or “casework with UK convicted terrorists, cross-referenced to the literature where this provides corroboration, but essentially evidenced by the offenders themselves” Users should always keep this in the back of their minds
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