Against the extremism behind bars

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The number of prisoners with Islamic setting is growing. This is also the danger that other inmates radicalise. Therefore, there are programs, which offer inmates a way out.

Chérif Chekatt has seen in the 29 years of his life in many prisons of the interior, in France, but also in Constance and Freiburg. Convicted, he was steels, mainly due to break-in thief. Behind bars gradually, however, was the Criminal, an Extremist, the French secret service led him for 2015 in the security file “Fiche”. 11. December 2018 committed Chekatt an attack on the Strasbourg Christmas market, in which he killed five people. Security forces killed him two days later, the terror militia IS referred to him posthumously as one of their “soldiers”.

Many inmates of prisons are vulnerable to radical ideas, not only in the case Chekatt known. “A Salafist goes in, five come out,” so a Hessian Constitution a protector of 2015 brought about it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on the point. Of the 750 people, which classifies the Federal criminal police office (BKA) as a so-called “offenders”, according to the authority currently 116 in German prisons. So you and others will not give their extremist ideas, but in the best case, even drop, there are in all 16 länder programmes for extremism prevention and de-radicalisation behind bars.

The Think animate

In eight of the länder, the Berlin-based Association “Violence Prevention Network” (VPN) is concerned with this task, in six countries, the employees of the Association in the prisons to provide the triad of prevention, training and de-radicalisation. “We have made the experience, that we can do it actually, work relationships”, said VPN, managing Director of Thomas Mücke DW. “In a lengthy Advisory process, we ensure that the people are beginning again to think for myself and to not run any of the ideologies behind.”

Thomas Mücke is the co-founder and managing Director of the Violence Prevention Networks

The pedagogical staff of VPN are religious Muslims, but not all: “It is for the first contact is very important, that is interesting,” says Mücke. Here are some of the clients would prefer a religious, some atheistic basic setting, however, is important. In 2017, a study by the BKA took that prevention and de-radicalisation is especially successful if there is a “broad-based Portfolio of measures and the diverse possibilities of Identification” will be offered.

A VPN sends its teaching staff directly in two teams in the prisons. The Tandems meet most meetings of eight people in the group, in more complicated cases, you also hold individual sessions. The prisoners are to understand especially the breaks in their biography and understand why they were at a certain time for extremist movements-prone. “If someone has an ideology, of the existence of other people is rejected, and we notice the doubt, then the point at which one says that he actually wants to lead a normal life often comes at some point,” said Mücke. “Then we try to work at this point with him.” Often, the clients develop in the course of the training a drive of its own, to change something – even if you have actually begun for other reasons. A reduction could you achieve this only if proof can be established that an interested party changed his attitude.

Life after

A prisoner has served his sentence, he is allowed to choose from the Tandem staff who will take care of six to twelve months – or longer, if necessary. The social Integration is not easy, said Thomas Mücke: “If, for example, it is known that they have lived in a combat zone, it is difficult to find a training place or a job. This group of people needs to be supervised after release from prison is very intense, so that those Affected can find a way back into society.” Setbacks were part of the said mosquito, but just when to Prevent Themselves and others from danger. it was on a good path.

The company often suppresses Ex-prisoners a stamp

The drop-out rate of the programs of VPN is two percent. “The most you can actually on this process – also on the care after prison time,” said VPN, managing Director of the mosquito of the DW. He warned, however, against exaggerated expectations: “of Course it will not be possible in each individual case,” says Mücke. “But if you do nothing, and that is barely controllable.”

More Islamists, no relapses

The number of prisoners with an Islamic Background is increasing in the state of Baden-Württemberg, for example, was by mid-2016 in the single-digit range, after a rapid increase in the Ministry of justice in Stuttgart currently 41 Islamists. Of these, only two persons, however, are due to an Islamist-motivated Crime convicted, 13 of them sitting in detention, the rest of the one sitting because of other offences and will be observed as a possible Islamists. In addition to the VPN, the competence center for counter-activism “konex is there”. A Ministry spokesman of the DW reported that “according to generally very positive reviews,” the funds for the respective programs would be increased. How effective the efforts are, ultimately, could not be said, because the goal achievement is limited only measurable and the number of relevant Convicted low.

In Hamburg-Barmbek in 2017 went a 27-Year-old who described himself as a Terrorist, with a knife on supermarket customers, and killed a man – he is serving life in prison

For the same reasons, the measurement of success is also valid in Hamburg as difficult. “We have not so far been able to observe that the prisoners would materialize during the period of incarceration radically, or that Hamburg’s prisons and places of recruitment would be by extremist groups,” said a spokesman for the judicial authority. In the Hanseatic city of nine seats is currently as extremists identified persons.

Unique exchange, the President of the Frankfurt higher regional court (OLG), Roman Poseck expressed of the year. “By the penal system, the Convicts are taken away from the Islamic environment and the indoctrination by Islamist Propaganda deprived,” said Poseck in a press release. The work of the VPN in the execution of criminal penalties set “in the right Places”. In Hesse, there have been since 2010, so far, not a single relapse, after Islamists had served their by the OLG imposed penalties.