Think Like A Terrorist To Combat Terrorism And Radicalization In Prison

"Think Like a Terrorist to Combat Terrorism and Radicalization in Prison provides guidelines for hardening facilities, training staff, preparing for radicalized-terrorist inmates' incarceration, and monitoring these inmates after their release. The book combines practitioner experience with scholarly insights to offer practical suggestions bolstered by research. The authors offer suggestions for housing, programming, security, and staff training with the ultimate goal of keeping correctional facilities, staff, and other inmates, safe from radicalization and spreading terrorist doctrines and terrorist acts. This necessarily requires examining and potentially changing prison and guard policies and procedures, hiring and training suitable staff, and ensuring technology is available. Correctional facilities can curtail the recruitment and radicalization of inmates by developing staff training, de-radicalization programs, management methods, techniques, and practices that address the recruitment issues associated with this threat. The need for understanding, and the role line correctional officers and first-line supervisors play in preventing radicalization, is critical in this process. It is also vital to connect with, and maintain, communication with appropriate security and intelligence agencies as needed. Key Features: Outlines common terrorist and extremist activities in prison using relevant real-world examples Instructs on how to detect and recognize such efforts as recruitment and radicalization and how to curtail and prevent such activity Provides guidance on establishing de-radicalization programs within prison facilities Presents recommendations on collecting, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence to correctional, law-enforcement, and intelligence agencies on potential terrorist activities and recruitment efforts Think Like a Terrorist to Combat Terrorism and Radicalization in Prison provides the necessary instruction and situational awareness to help professionals recognize and curtail terrorist activities in prisons. Likewise, prison administrators and operators will gain a greater understanding of the challenges-and need for physical and operation security and establish policies and protocols-to identify and curtail radicalization within their facilities"--

This volume provides an overview of intervention and management strategies for dealing with terrorist and extremist offenders in prisons. The management of terrorist and extremist prisoners has long been recognised as a difficult problem in prisons. In most countries, such offenders are relatively rare, but when their numbers increase these prisoners can undermine the effectiveness and safety of the prison system. At a global level there is an increasing recognition of the problem of militant jihadi extremists in prison and their ability to recruit new members among other prisoners. The numbers of such prisoners are low but growing and, as a result, prisons are becoming centres of radicalisation; indeed, in some cases, terrorist plots appear to have been based entirely on networks that were radicalised in prison. This volume presents an expertly informed assessment of what we know about terrorists, extremists and prison, exploring the experience of a wide range of countries and of different political movements. Drawing critical lessons from historical case studies, the book examines critical issues around management strategies, radicalisation and deradicalisation, reform, risk assessment, as well as post-release experiences. The role that prisoners play in the conflicts beyond the jail walls is also examined, with case studies illustrating how prisoners can play a critical role in bringing about a peace process or alternatively in sustaining or even escalating campaigns of violence. Written by leading experts in the field, this volume will be of much interest to students of terrorism/counter-terrorism, criminology, security studies and IR in general.

Correctional policies for Islamist violent extremist offenders are often based on the premise that prisons can be hotbeds of radicalization. The perception that inmates are susceptible to violent extremist belief systems has given rise to a fervent international public, political, and scholarly debate and has led to the introduction of drastic, often expensive policies to counter the threat of prison radicalization. But is the introduction of these policies justified? A key question is whether violent extremist offenders should be concentrated in separate high-security prisons, or whether they should be integrated into the mainstream inmate population. Prisoner Radicalization and Terrorism Detention Policy argues that concentration strategies to manage violent extremist offenders are often flawed – based on untested, potentially false assumptions that are rooted in fear rather than in facts. Little academic evidence has been produced that can valuably inform policy making in this area. As a result, policies to detain violent extremist offenders may be inadequately tailored to achieve their objectives, and could even lead to an intensification of the violent extremist threat. This book is the first to present a detailed and systematic case study of the decision-making and implementation process behind terrorism detention policy. It will be essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers researching criminal justice, terrorism and extremism.

“Mark Hamm is, without doubt, the world’s leading expert on prison radicalization. Based on decades of research, this book presents a nuanced and sophisticated picture,. Beautifully written, it is the most complete, and the most empirically rigorous, account of this phenomenon to date. A must read for anyone interested in homegrown radicalization.”—Peter Neumann, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), King’s College London The Madrid train bombers, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks—all were led by men radicalized behind bars. Today’s prisons are hotbeds for personal transformation toward terrorist beliefs and actions due to the increasingly chaotic nature of prison life caused by mass incarceration. In The Spectacular Few, Mark Hamm, a former prison warden, demonstrates how prisoners use criminal cunning, collective resistance and nihilism to incite terrorism. Drawing from a wide range of sources, The Spectacular Few imagines the texture of prisoners’ lives. Hamm covers their criminal thinking styles, the social networks that influenced them, and personal “turning points” that set them on the pathway to violent extremism. Hamm argues that in order to understand terrorism today, we must come to terms with how prisoners are treated behind bars. Mark S. Hamm is a former prison warden from Arizona and currently Professor of Criminology at Indiana State University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Terrorism Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York. His books include Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond (NYU Press, 2007). Alternative Criminology series

The Madrid train bombers, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks—all were led by men radicalized behind bars. By their very nature, prisons are intended to induce transformative experiences among inmates, but today’s prisons are hotbeds for personal transformation toward terrorist beliefs and actions due to the increasingly chaotic nature of prison life caused by mass incarceration. In The Spectacular Few, Mark Hamm demonstrates how prisoners use criminal cunning, collective resistance and nihilism to incite terrorism against Western targets. A former prison guard himself, Hamm knows the realities of day-to-day prison life and understands how prisoners socialize, especially the inner-workings and power of prison gangs—be they the Aryan Brotherhood or radical Islam. He shows that while Islam is mainly a positive influence in prison, certain forces within the prison Muslim movement are aligned with the efforts of al-Qaeda and its associates to inspire convicts in the United States and Europe to conduct terrorist attacks on their own. Drawing from a wide range of sources—including historical case studies of prisoner radicalization reaching from Gandhi and Hitler to Malcolm X, Bobby Sands and the detainees of Guantanamo; a database of cases linking prisoner radicalization with evolving terrorist threats ranging from police shootouts to suicide bombings; interviews with intelligence officers, prisoners affiliated with terrorist groups and those disciplined for conducting radicalizing campaigns in prison—The Spectacular Few imagines the texture of prisoners’ lives: their criminal thinking styles, the social networks that influenced them, and personal “turning points” that set them on the pathway to violent extremism. Hamm provides a broad understanding of how prisoners can be radicalized, arguing that in order to understand the contemporary landscape of terrorism, we must come to terms with how prisoners are treated behind bars.

Outlines common terrorist and extremist activities in prison using relevant real-world examples Instructs on how to detect and recognize such efforts as recruitment and radicalization and how to curtail and prevent such activity Provides guidance on establishing de-radicalization programs within prison facilities Presents recommendations on collecting, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence to correctional, law-enforcement, and intelligence agencies on potential terrorist activities and recruitment efforts

There are thousands of followers of non-Judeo-Christian faith groups in American correctional institutions. Research suggests that many of these prisoners began their incarceration with little or no religious calling, but converted during their imprisonment. According to the FBI, some of these prisoners may be vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. The purpose of this study is three-fold: (1) to collect baseline information on non-traditional religions in U.S. correctional institutions; (2) to identify the personal and social motivations for prisoners’ conversions to these faith groups; and (3) to assess the prisoners’ potential for terrorist recruitment. The study creates a starting point for more in-depth research on the relationship between prisoners’ conversion to non-traditional religions and extremist violence. Figure. This is a print on demand report.

This book seeks to understand the processes of reintegration of former Jihadist detainees, as well as the role that the police and other frontline professionals play in this process. Over the past few decades the number of people who have been detained under the suspicion of terrorist activities has grown significantly. This has resulted in an increased scholarly interest in the topic of prisons and terrorism. However, the main focus of academic research has been on the period of incarceration with researchers paying extensive attention to the conditions under which terrorists have been detained as well as to various processes of alienation and (violent) radicalisation that sometimes take root while in prison. Much less has been written about the period after their incarceration and the steps being taken to prepare them for that transition. This book seeks to fill this gap. It argues that sentencing or incarcerating terrorism suspects is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of the next phase: a process of reintegration, or the start of a new cycle of violence. This exploratory study outlines the factors during and after detention that contribute or hinder the reintegration of those who have been incarcerated for violent extremism and terrorism. The overriding aim of this work is to facilitate further research into the radicalisation and de-radicalisation of jihadist suspects. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, Islamist radicalisation, criminology and security studies in general.