To be effective, terrorism prevention programs need strengthening

There have been some successes in community education and public-private partnerships, such as the Peer to Peer (P2P) program, which funded university students to create media campaigns to counter extremist narratives. This program was repeatedly cited by interviewees as a success story in government cooperation with NGOs. Many interviewees viewed the recent defunding of P2P’s domestically focused component as a significant missed opportunity.

Some areas of the country have built capacity locally where law enforcement, other government agencies, non-government organizations and community groups collaborate to intervene with individuals at risk of committing violence before they break the law. Such initiatives provide examples of programs that protect the rights and privacy of citizens while providing a way to respond early when individuals appear to pose a threat to themselves and the public.

The researchers synthesized information from published literature, international case studies and documentary material provided by DHS and others. They also drew insights from interviews with relevant researchers, current and former federal personnel, members of technology firms and NGOs, and practitioners at the state and local level in government, academia and non-governmental sectors.

Key findings

Current terrorism prevention efforts are limited

·  Limited programmatic focus and resource investment since 2014, coupled with sustained opposition that focused on limiting CVE efforts, have constrained efforts to develop approaches to individuals at risk of ideological violence other than arrest, prosecution, and incarceration.

Reinvestment in federal field staff is key

·  Personnel who are based locally but who are aware of the federal picture could help to build relationships, strengthen trust, and act as on-the-ground facilitators of local terrorism prevention efforts. This could both deliver immediate results and help to build for the longer term.

Interviewees identified specific needs in the areas of awareness and training, federal support, federal program development, and research and evaluation

·  Objective threat information is needed by technology companies to guide their efforts in the online space. Improved risk-assessment tools also would be useful to manage programming for individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses.

·  Sharing best practices and knowledge was viewed as important, and interviewees noted the value of bringing together researchers, implementers, and others to share information.

·  Federal action to facilitate local programs and capability-building should be the priority across multiple components of terrorism prevention.

·  A more robust and interdisciplinary research community is needed for terrorism prevention, and, although efforts in the past regarding CVE were useful and should be continued, they are not enough.

Recommendations

·  For countermessaging and intervention programming, the federal government should focus on funding and assisting state, local, and nongovernmental organizations and private actors rather than building capabilities itself.

·  The federal government should continue to provide community awareness briefings and training exercises to local groups. These activities were viewed by interviewees as successful in disseminating needed information. Recent reductions in staffing have limited federal capacity to do so.

·  Adapting existing tools like table-top exercises to help empower local areas to explore the types of terrorism prevention that are appropriate for their circumstances appeared to be promising.

·  Openness and transparency in training delivery would help to support trust in a controversial area, and using unclassified and open source information that can be shared broadly is more practical for efforts that must bridge many organizational boundaries.

·  Pursuing public-private partnerships and broadening support from nonsecurity agencies would be a practical approach to supporting terrorism prevention efforts in a way that is potentially more acceptable to communities and members of the public.

·  Building and maintaining the bench of expert practitioners will be important in developing programs from the national to the local levels.

·  Strengthening investment in evaluation would address criticism of the effectiveness of both past CVE and current terrorism prevention efforts in the future.

— Read more Brian A. Jackson et al., Practical Terrorism Prevention: Reexamining U.S. National Approaches to Addressing the Threat of Ideologically Motivated Violence (RAND, 2019)