Search results

This paper aims to present a case study analysing the reintegration programs of Malaysian violent extremist detainees and prisoners. It explores the ongoing challenges faced by these individuals as they strive to reintegrate and assimilate into society.

Qualitative data was collected through interviews with 12 violent extremist detainees and prisoners who had successfully reintegrated into society. The life course perspective was used as the analytical framework, and data analysis was conducted using ATLAS.ti.

The study revealed common challenges faced by the participants in gaining societal acceptance, dealing with stigma and achieving economic stability. The results also highlighted the difficulties of sustaining livelihoods due to heightened vigilance in the surrounding environment.

These findings enhance the understanding of factors influencing successful reintegration of people who were involved in violent extremism into mainstream society.

Government bodies, agencies or organisations and non-governmental organisations can implement these successful factors to prevent any issues of recidivism or resentment towards society.

This research contributes unique insights based on data from individuals who have undergone successful or partial successful reintegration. Detailed academic sharing of such information from a Southeast Asian country such as Malaysia is relatively scarce, given the specific procedures required for accessing such data.

With 43.2 million coronavirus cases and 525,000 deaths in 2022, India ranked second worldwide, after the United States (84.6 million cases and 1 million deaths), according to the latest available June 2022 COVID-19 impact data.

Amid people’s growing mistrust in the government, India’s news media enhanced the nation’s distinguished designation as the world’s largest and most populous democracy. India’s news media inform, educate, empower, and entertain a surging population of 1.4 billion people, which is roughly one-sixth of the world’s people.

Drawing upon the media agendamelding theoretical framework, we conducted a case study research into interplay between two prominent democratic institutions, the media and the government, to analyze the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in redefining India’s networked society.

India’s COVID-19 pandemic aggravated internecine tensions between media and government relating to four key freedom issues: (1) world’s largest COVID-19 lockdown affecting 1.3 billion Indians from March 25, 2020 to August 2020 with extensions and five-phased re-openings, to restrict the spread of COVID-19; (2) Internet shutdowns; (3) media censorship during the 1975–1977 “Emergency”; and (4) unabated murders of journalists in India.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused deleterious problems debilitating the tensions between the media and the government, India’s journalists thrived by speaking truth to power. This study delineates key aspects of India’s media agendamelding that explicates how the people of India form their media agendas. India’s news audiences meld media messages from newspapers, television, and social media to form a picture of the issues, insights, and ideas that define their lives and times in the 21st century digital age.

The purpose of this study is to compare violent and non-violent extremists in terms of their age when they first perpetrate an extremist act, and to understand how this relates to other factors underlying extremist behaviours. While the end goal of many extremists may be functionally similar, the pathways into extremism vary, and the literature has demonstrated that a “one-size-fits-all” explanation does not exist. Motivational drivers are complex and dynamic; therefore, attempting to identify a terrorist “profile” has limited applied efficacy.

This study applied a temporal approach (“crime script analysis” or CSA) to identify, map and compare the sequential stages (or “scenes”) in the life histories of violent and non-violent extremists who have committed acts of extremism across different age groups. Crime scripts comprising mainly qualitative data for 40 male extremists (20 violent, 20 non-violent “cases”) were developed, and CSA was conducted according to the age at which they committed their first extremist offence.

Results demonstrated key temporal, developmental differences between the pathways of extremists who commit their first offence at different ages. One key difference was that for both the violent and non-violent extremists, those under 30 used the internet as a main means of joining networks and spreading information, whereas the over 30s made more personal, community links.

This research can aid identification of potential environmental triggers and potential increased susceptibility to triggers across certain age groups.

This paper aims to investigate the moderated-mediation roles of perception of police response to crime and digital interclass coalition against crime between fear of terrorist attacks and psychological distress among residents of Tema Metropolis in Ghana.

A cluster sampling technique was used in the selection of 577 residents who answered questions on fear of terrorism, perception of police response to crime, digital interclass coalition against crime and psychological distress. The study used regression analysis to assess the hypothesized paths.

The findings show that digital interclass coalition against crime moderates the partially mediated relationship between perception of police response to crime and residents’ psychological distress.

The study is limited in scope by the generalization of its findings, as it was restricted to only residents of Tema Metropolis in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.

This research is one of the first in criminal psychology to explore the relevance of police-public engagement in averting large-scale crime in an emerging economy.

Factors that may influence risk and/or vulnerability to young people’s involvement in terrorism are currently unclear. Understanding the factors that contribute to a young person’s risk profile is a high priority for Youth Justice Services to enable the development of targeted interventions and subsequent risk reduction. The purpose of this study is to systematically identify and critically review studies relating to young peoples’ involvement in terrorism to understand potential risk and/or vulnerability factors and the implications for intervention.

Literature was evaluated using the systematic review method. Twelve papers were selected for the systematic review according to the inclusion criteria.

Twelve factors emerged that indicated relevance to terrorism by young people and were combined into five overarching themes: contextual, social, psychological factors, trauma and use of time.

This systematic review is one of the first of its kind relating to terrorism by young people. The reported findings will be valuable to practitioners seeking to understand the risk and vulnerability factors related to terrorism by young people and the implications for intervention. Directions for future research are explored.

This chapter analyses the degree to which the UK Higher Education (UKHE) Sector can offer spaces for students to critically reflect on topics relevant to activist criminology such as zemiology or abolitionism as opposed to constructing the criminal justice system (CJS) as a natural solution for crimes and social harms. This chapter argues for the importance of this topic due to deepening institutional links between universities and criminal justice agencies in the name of professionalisation for the latter (Hallenberg & Cockroft, 2017). This chapter proposes that to avoid criminology curricula merely reproducing the priorities and solutions of the CJS, it should turn to the liberatory pedagogy of Paolo Freire (1996). This includes teaching practices to encourage recognition of social movements and resistance against harms of states, corporations, or the CJS as legitimate foci in the criminology curriculum.

The demands on the police to ensure security and order have increased in times of growing right-wing extremism, corona protests and widespread criticism of and dissatisfaction with democratic structures and processes. Protection, escort or even confrontation in the course of public demonstrations and protests as well as the protection, e.g. of politicians, synagogues or mosques requires additional deployment of the police and poses extended challenges. However, the police force itself also faces various problems with antidemocratic, violent or extremist police officers. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate why and how civic education of police officers can be a cornerstone to respond to the described challenges and improve democratic policing.

This paper describes how civic education can be organized in police training and further education and how it can be designed in cooperation with civil society actors. It is based on a research and development project conducted between 2016 and 2021 under the title “Civic Education and Police.”

Civic education can or could be an approach in sensitizing police officers to social conflicts and in better understanding the background and reasons for their deployment. Moreover, civic education can be helpful in preventing abuse of power and police violence, reducing negative aspects of esprit de corps and strengthening police legitimacy.

Civic education of police officers can help to understand conflicts and social tensions, strengthen the understanding of the society, improve police investigation, reduce misbehavior and support legitimacy in the democratic state.

The article uses findings from the project Civic Education and Police, which was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education between 2016 and 2021. Project partners were the German Police University and the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia. The project conducted empirical studies on the supply and demand structure of civic education for and in the police. In addition, a database of educational concepts, a series of conferences and a new journal for conference documentation, research and special issues were launched.