ABSTRACT
Family, friends, and the social (affective) environment is crucial in understanding most pathways into violent extremism and conducting effective and sustainable interventions. As was seen in Chapter 2, there is an almost unanimous consensus among scholars from different disciplines that, for example, changes in one’s family situation can induce disengagement processes from various deviant or violent involvement, such as violent youth gangs (Deane, Bracken, & Morrissette, 2007; Huff, 1998; Schneider, 2001), ordinary crime, terrorism (e.g., Bjørgo & Horgan, 2009; Fink & Haerne, 2008; Horgan, 2009), or New Religious Movements (NRMs) (Bromley & Holstein, 1991). Pro-social ties have been demonstrated as one of the most important aspects of sustained desistance (e.g., Disley, Weed, Reding, Clutterbuck, & Warnes, 2011, pp. 36-37; Meisenhelder, 1977; Sampson, Laub, & Wimer, 2006; Vigil, 1988, 2010), and the successful treatment of PTSD, for example, also heavily relies on the support of the patient’s family and friends (e.g., Grossman, 2009, p. 288). Beyond the family, close friends may be of high relevance in establishing a contact between intervention providers and the potentially radicalizing individual (Williams, Horgan, & Evans, 2015). Together, these ‘associate gatekeepers’ are crucial for CVE programs, as they provide an effective assistance in lowering the threshold or barrier in reaching out to early intervention support. This is also known from other reporting mechanisms for deviant or risky behavior (Borum, 2013; Rowe, Wilcox, & Gadlin, 2009). Hence, family and friends are also of high relevance in spotting violent radicalization early in order to introduce targeted intervention, as this affective social space is arguably one of the areas in which violent radicalization takes place and becomes visible in early stages. Even in regard to phenomena usually considered highly inaccessible by definition-e.g., lone wolf terrorism-the social environment of the perpetrators was far from unaware about the radicalization process:
In 82.4% of the cases, other people were aware of the individual’s grievance that spurred the terrorist plot, and in 79%, other individuals were aware of the individual’s commitment to a specific extremist ideology. In
63.9% of the cases, family and friends were aware of the individual’s intent to engage in terrorism-related activities because the offender verbally told them.
