Perspective: DeradicalizationLondon Bridge Attack Follows “Dumbing Down” of Freed Terrorist Scheme – Expert

The architect of the U.K. government program for moving convicted terrorists from prison into the community says the current system lacks the “legitimacy and credibility” required to rehabilitate extremists safely.

Mark Townsend writes in the Guardian that “Simon Cornwall, who set up the probation service’s central extremism unit, said that as a result of “a dumbing down of how things are done”, the current approach was missing the safeguarding and human relationships required to modify behavior and reduce risk.”

His assessment follows the attack at London Bridge by convicted terrorist Usman Khan, who was out on license from prison when he killed Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, and injured three others during a meeting of the Cambridge University rehabilitation initiative Learning Together on 29 November.

Townsend writes:

Cornwall, who worked with a number of the nine-strong terror group – including Khan – which was jailed for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange in 2010, said: “There’s been a breakdown in the system, a dumbing down of how things are done.

“The criminal justice system has become very insular, moving away from partnerships with community groups who can form crucial relationships with offenders to a really securitized view. It has lost the legitimacy and credibility it had before,” he said.

Cornwall, who introduced the concept of mentors working with terrorists to help reintegrate them into the community, said that such a “hands-on” human approach had been jettisoned in favor of a reliance on technology such as tagging.

The fallout from Khan’s attack has led to calls for an independent review of the U.K. counter-radicalization programs.