Project description:This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: to identify the existing evidence that considers the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions in preventing terrorism and radicalisation and to identify existing gaps in the evidence where new primary research could be undertaken and where future synthesis could be conducted.
Project description:Research exploring radicalization pathways and how and why people become involved in terrorism has expanded since the 9/11 attacks. Likewise, over the last decade research exploring de-radicalization and desistence from terrorism has grown and expanded in an attempt to promote exit from extremist or terror groups. However, research studies on how individuals sustain engagement in terrorism and their involvement with extremist organizations, often in the face of great adversity, are absent from the body of research. To address this scarcity of research this study analyzed accounts of engagement in violent extremism produced by Northern Irish loyalist and republican paramilitaries in order to explore how their paramilitary lifestyle, perpetration of acts of political violence and the pressure from countering threats posed by rival groups, and the State security forces impacted on them. The analysis utilized a hybrid of thematic analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The themes raised through the analysis reflected the psychological, social and economic hardship associated with this lifestyle. The narrative accounts also illustrated psychological changes associated to engagement in violence and from insulation within tightly knit extremist groups. As most of the participants faced incarceration during their paramilitary careers, themes also reflected on the impact imprisonment had on them. The themes explored factors that sustained their involvement, including the role of identity development and identity fusion in sustaining their extremism, the impact of insulated group membership, feelings of efficacy, dehumanization processes, community support, and beliefs in the utility of violence.
Project description:BackgroundCurrently, terrorism and suicide bombing are global psychosocial processes that attracts a growing number of psychological and psychiatric contributions to enhance practical counter-terrorism measures. The present study is a systematic review that explores the methodological quality reporting and the psychometric soundness of the instruments developed to identify risk factors of terrorism, extremism, radicalisation, authoritarianism and fundamentalism.MethodA systematic search strategy was established to identify instruments and studies developed to screen individuals at risk of committing extremist or terrorist offences using 20 different databases across the fields of law, medicine, psychology, sociology and politics. Information extracted was consolidated into two different tables and a 26-item checklist, reporting respectively background information, the psychometric properties of each tool, and the methodological quality markers of these tools. 37 articles met our criteria, which included a total of 4 instruments to be used operationally by professionals, 17 tools developed as research measures, and 9 inventories that have not been generated from a study.ResultsJust over half of the methodological quality markers required for a transparent methodological description of the instruments were reported. The amount of reported psychological properties was even fewer, with only a third of them available across the different studies. The category presenting the least satisfactory results was that containing the 4 instruments to be used operationally by professionals, which can be explained by the fact that half of them refrained from publishing the major part of their findings and relevant guidelines.ConclusionsA great number of flaws have been identified through this systematic review. The authors encourage future researchers to be more thorough, comprehensive and transparent in their methodology. They also recommend the creation of a multi-disciplinary joint working group in order to best tackle this growing contemporary problem.
Project description:This is the protocol for a Campbell review. The objective of this evidence and gap map is to presents the existing research on the impact of arts-based interventions in secure criminal justice settings (SCJS) that aim to improve desistance outcomes for offenders. It will indicate the quality of available evidence, highlighting the gaps and informing future research priorities. Importantly, it will also identify where the evidence could be systematically reviewed. This would clearly produce a more comprehensive understanding of the available knowledge and an opportunity to move forward in a more direct and focussed way, with the potential to influence research, intervention development, and inform funding decisions.
Project description:This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows. (1) Examine whether secondary and tertiary interventions delivered outside of the criminal justice system are effective at countering the cognitive and behavioural radicalisation of children and adolescents by synthesising evidence relating to relevant primary and secondary outcomes of effectiveness. (2) Examine whether secondary and tertiary interventions delivered outside of the criminal justice system are being implemented as intended by synthesising evidence that captures how interventions are implemented, considering whether they are implemented as expected or in ways that align with their underlying logic. (3) Identify those implementation factors (facilitators and barriers) and moderators that impact how interventions working with children and adolescents are delivered.
Project description:Since 2010 and the founding of the Islamic State, the radicalisation phenomenon in Europe has involved more adolescents and converts to Islam than in previous Islamist terrorist group movements (e.g., Al-Qaeda). In most cases, these adolescents are "homegrown terrorists," a challenging difference, as they are in confrontation with their home and societal environment. As a new and emerging phenomenon, radicalisation leads to many questions. Are empathic capacities altered? Are they presenting psychiatric pathologies or suicidal tendencies that explain why they put themselves in serious dangers? Are they just young delinquents who simply met a radical ideology? In January 2018, by special Justice Department authorisation, we contacted all minors (N = 31) convicted in France for "criminal association to commit terrorism." We assessed several sociodemographic, clinical and psychological variables, including empathy and suicidality, in half of them (N = 15) and compared them with 101 teenagers convicted for non-terrorist delinquency who were placed in Closed Educational Centres (CEC). The results show that adolescents engaged in radicalisation and terrorism do not have a significant prevalence of psychiatric disorders, suicidal tendencies or lack of empathy. It also appears that they have different psychological profiles than delinquent adolescents. "Radicalised" adolescents show better intellectual skills, insight capacities and coping strategies. In addition, the manifestation of their difficulties is less externalised than adolescents from the CEC, having committed very few delinquent acts.
Project description:Emotions are conspicuous components of radicalization, violent extremism, and conspiracy ideation. Of the emotions studied for their contribution to those social pathologies, envy has been relatively unexplored. We investigate the relationship between envy, radicalization, and conspiracy ideation. Envy appears to affect core aspects of radicalization, particularly the endorsement of extremism and the acceptance of violent means to achieve one's ends, while radicalization facilitates the adoption of conspiracy ideation, rather than the latter being a cause of radicalization. Implications for future research on radicalization and violent extremism are discussed.
Project description:The optimal dynamic treatment rule (ODTR) framework offers an approach for understanding which kinds of patients respond best to specific treatments - in other words, treatment effect heterogeneity. Recently, there has been a proliferation of methods for estimating the ODTR. One such method is an extension of the SuperLearner algorithm - an ensemble method to optimally combine candidate algorithms extensively used in prediction problems - to ODTRs. Following the ``causal roadmap," we causally and statistically define the ODTR and provide an introduction to estimating it using the ODTR SuperLearner. Additionally, we highlight practical choices when implementing the algorithm, including choice of candidate algorithms, metalearners to combine the candidates, and risk functions to select the best combination of algorithms. Using simulations, we illustrate how estimating the ODTR using this SuperLearner approach can uncover treatment effect heterogeneity more effectively than traditional approaches based on fitting a parametric regression of the outcome on the treatment, covariates and treatment-covariate interactions. We investigate the implications of choices in implementing an ODTR SuperLearner at various sample sizes. Our results show the advantages of: (1) including a combination of both flexible machine learning algorithms and simple parametric estimators in the library of candidate algorithms; (2) using an ensemble metalearner to combine candidates rather than selecting only the best-performing candidate; (3) using the mean outcome under the rule as a risk function. Finally, we apply the ODTR SuperLearner to the ``Interventions" study, an ongoing randomized controlled trial, to identify which justice-involved adults with mental illness benefit most from cognitive behavioral therapy to reduce criminal re-offending.
Project description:Understanding the psychological processes that drive violent extremism is a pressing global issue. Across six studies, we demonstrate that perceived cultural threats lead to violent extremism because they increase people's need for cognitive closure (NFC). In general population samples (from Denmark, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, and an international sample) and a sample of former Mujahideen in Afghanistan, single-level and multilevel mediation analyses revealed that NFC mediated the association between perceived cultural threats and violent extremist outcomes. Further, in comparisons between the sample of former Afghan Mujahideen and the general population sample from Afghanistan following the known-group paradigm, the former Mujahideen scored significantly higher on cultural threat, NFC, and violent extremist outcomes. Moreover, the proposed model successfully differentiated former Afghan Mujahideen participants from the general Afghan participants. Next, two preregistered experiments provided causal support for the model. Experimentally manipulating the predictor (cultural threat) in Pakistan led to higher scores on the mediator (NFC) and dependent variables (violent extremist outcomes). Finally, an experiment conducted in France demonstrated the causal effect of the mediator (NFC) on violent extremist outcomes. Two internal meta-analyses using state-of-the-art methods (i.e., meta-analytic structural equation modeling and pooled indirect effects analyses) further demonstrated the robustness of our results across the different extremist outcomes, designs, populations, and settings. Cultural threat perceptions seem to drive violent extremism by eliciting a need for cognitive closure.