What Are the Effects of Deradicalisation Programmes?

In recent years deradicalisation initiatives were taken by state authorities and NGOs. They started in Scandinavian countries in the middle of the 1990ies, „Nine eleven“ in 2001 led to similar activities in other European countries. In the meantime, initiatives can be identified in The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Besides traditional instruments like civic education, social work, support of communities, further ones came up in the course of the 1990ies, which address extremist individuals and their social environments. Their main purpose is to facilitate the process of  leaving extremist organisations by different means: discussion, everydaylife support, finding a place to live and a job etc.

My contribution summarizes experience from and research about German state driven and NGO driven deradicalisation programmes. It comes to different conclusions:

-          There is a lack of criteria with regard to a successful or failing dropout process: what is  the relationship between behavioral and cognitive change?

-          There is low evidence about the success of the programmes, there is no long-term supervision

-          State driven programmes have to be criticized, because of a certain data protection problem: In doing social work they do another „hidden“ job: gathering information about extremist personal relations of a participant. Thus, trust as a basic resource of cooperation could be touched and misused

My presentation aims at putting the recent development and theoretical aspects in Germany in a broader interdisciplinary context of European and American views.