Demobilization and Reintegration Methods - Essay Example

Criminology Prisons play crucial role in reforming and radicalizing people. Imprisonment of terrorist offenders aimsat preventing the crime. It is important to identify best practices, principles, trade- offs and dilemmas of imprisonment that can help government and policy makers to come up with innovative ideas and evade expensive, counterproductive and unplanned mistakes. Prison matters have a significant function in fundamental and aggressive movement in the modern world. Prisons act as incubators for peaceful transformation and change. They are places of vulnerability which attracts radicalization. Besides, terrorism is a threat to the growth in the society. Prisons play a positive role in solving problems of terrorism and radicalization in the entire society. They can be net contributors to battle against terrorism. Terrorists are not common offenders and that means they have to be treated different while in prison. They have a tendency of radicalizing other prisoners and mobilizing outside support. Terrorists try to reconstruct operational control structures. Most countries in the world have tried some policy practices of concentration and dispersal. It involves separating terrorists from the rest of the prisoner population and distributing them among a small number of high security prisons. Demand for security and imprisonment complement each other. Prison services should be more determined in promoting positive manipulation and come up with more inventive approaches to make easy prisoners’ evolution back into mainstream society. Terrorism in other Island is different types. It includes extreme right-wing terrorism. People involved in right-wing terrorism receive special guidance, training and support. Imprisonment of terror offenders’ aims at preventing the crime spread by preventing raising of funds and recruiting people to this cause. Northern Island experience has important contribution to the rest of the world in regard to imprisonment of terrorist offenders. Northern Island is a society that has been violent political conflict for many years. The government of northern Island has made effort to come up with national laws regarding imprisonment. National laws are constantly harmonized with international standards. Possible discrepancies between practice and legislation were recognized and bodies were established for implementing those standards. Rehabilitation of terrorist offenders in Northern Island has a diverse and long development. Prison sentence is rehabilitation oriented (Siegel, 02). It is evidently stated in the Law on the Execution of Prison Sentence. The law lays emphasis on the execution terrorism offenders’ imprisonment. It states that the major purpose of the execution of prison sentence is human treatment and admiration of dignity of the individual serving penitentiary sentence. The law emphasizes in freedom which is freedom in accordance with social rules and law. The main aims of rehabilitation include contact with family, education, free time activities and work. Collective integration and de-radicalization is one of the steps applied in Northern Island. This incorporates the existence of authoritative and strong leaderships. There is hierarchical control and command structures. The government supports these programs. The government has opened appropriate lines of communication to keep these processes on track. This enables the terrorists to be integrated back into the mainstream society. The Northern Island has made progress in terms of political concessions whereby the government fully-fledges peace process. There is also individual disintegration and de-radicalization of terrorist offenders in Northern Island. The process involves reducing the number of active terrorists in a particular society by helping them to do away with terrorism and making it easy to be re-integrated into main stream. Although the political momentum is no longer with the insurgents and other conditions determined externally, they have a very important role in reducing terrorism. These act as a complement in the fight against corruption. There are always constant reports with statistic concerning terrorism which identify the key underlying principles and drivers of individual de-radicalization and disengagement.. There helps policy makers and parties concerned to identify elements of best practices and phenomenon. These two programmes consist of vocational training together with ideological and ideological re-education. The Northern Island experience helps terrorism offenders in material inducements. There has been emphasis on sophisticated methods of locking prisoners on multiple commitments and obligations towards state, community and family (Siegel, 63). Besides, emphasis has been laid on the offenders’ transition into the mainstream society by providing them with new beginning and establishing social networks away from extremist. The credible interlocutors are also induced. This helps terrorist in to relating their psychological and personal needs. An outward-looking and positive approach was adopted which serves as an aspiration for policy makers and authorities in the whole globe. De-radicalization concentrates on facilitating behavioral change and rejection of violent means. The challenges experienced in Northern Island when handling terrorist offenders indicate that behaviors of politically motivated offenders and terrorists are different from the rest of the prison population. Understanding this differences help in conceptualizing the particular challenges in dealing with terrorists. The environment where imprisonment takes place should be designed in such a way that prevention of radicalization of inmates in enhanced. It should also prevent the maintenance and recreation of operational command structures. Moreover, it should prevent the exploitation of the prison environment for the purpose. The imprisonment of terrorist offender should provide an opportunity for disengagement and de-radicalization and make contribution towards reducing terrorism and radicalization. Concentration, isolation and separation seemed to be the best practices to be adopted as this would prevent any emerging links between ordinary criminals and terrorists. In addition, these three methods enables prison services to avoid clear vocal points for public protests hence makes it possible for the prison administration to maintain the idea that terrorist are treated just like any other prisoners. The comprehensive political strategy has been adapted which can be used in peace negotiations in future. This strategy reflects the needs and risks of terrorist prisoner populations. Containment and incapacitation are dominant strategies for prison services in the Northern Island. They involve treating terrorist offenders similar to non-terrorist offenders. Terrorists are sent to high security prisons and sometimes locked up in their cells or longer. They are closely monitored and their communication is subject to greater scrutiny (Siegel, 84). Furthermore, these regimes have prompted judicial challenges. It serves as a way of minimizing the interaction between the terrorists in prison and the rest of the world. This provides incentives for separatist prisoners who are willing to turn against the comrades and remove difficulties created by constitutional, legal and political traditions. The Northern Island prison authorities make efforts on reforming terrorist prisoners. This applies mainly when the terrorist offenders are of foreign nationals who will be sent back to their countries. More funds are spent on reforming prisoners and eliminating constitutional constraints brought about by lack of ambitions. In addition, there is the presence of compelling lessons which continue for long. The Northern Island has used after care where a prisoner is prepared for release. After care service facilitate transition of terror offenders into stable environments and lessen their vulnerability to being recruited into extremist activities. Establishing effective after care services to prisoners lead to a more systematic approach towards reform and rehabilitation. Prisoners are obliged to participate in similar probationary arrangements that are made available to other prisoners. Frontline staff should be trained and educated on how to handle terrorists. Prison staffs should ensure that terrorists are treated on equal grounds like other prisoners. This makes it difficult for terrorists and their outside support to exploit the prison environment for propaganda purposes. For instance, terrorist and non-terrorist prisoners have an opportunity to interact. It is of paramount importance for prison staff to identify behavior changes. For example, prison staff should quickly identify attempts to influence others or assume leadership roles. In addition, signs of disappointment should be detected with the group and its ideology. Signs of dissatisfaction with the movement, its methods should not be taken for granted. Reform and security go hand in hand. The prison staff should ensure that the prison is not swamped with extremist and inflammatory literature. It represents a re-condition for rehabilitation and reforms. Positive influences need to be nurtured and negative one need to be discouraged. Soft interventions may be provided to the prisoners. It involves providing ideological challenges to the extremist ideology, bringing in speakers who can present alternative view points and debate related issues making vocational and educational opportunities more available (Siegel, 32). Besides, adequate number of should be trained. Training helps in reinforcement of the basic importance of prison systems in creating inmate identities. Moreover, this helps to reduce the incidence of vulnerability, hopelessness and defiant in prison population. This seems to be an apparent priority for developing countries. Another way of combating prison radicalization among terrorist prisoners is denial of religious space to extremists. For example, the recent increase of interest reveal that prison services have understood the significance of preventing extremists from monopolizing the Islamic narrative. This should be tackled in a professional way. It is imperative to note it is neither possible nor reasonable to expect prison imams to be terrorist experts, welfare officers and spiritual advisers. Their role is to make certain the proviso of adequate religious services and take care of the spiritual needs of terrorist prisoner. They are not supposed to be involved in the role played by prison staff. Besides, the prison Imams’ autonomy and reliability needs to be protected. Their services should be professionalized. The parties concerned should ensure that prison Imams reflect the diversity of the Islam faith. Share resources should be made available to individual prisoners thereby enabling them to seek advice and access to specialized services such as experts and translators. In conclusion demobilization and reintegration are some of the methods recommended by the United Nations. It has long been practiced in former conflict zones especially in the Northern Island .A wider significance of these issues should be clearly understood and acknowledged by prison services. For instance, it is upon heads of prison services to decide matters of national policy aimed at deterring terrorism. They have every right to air their views and experiences. They expect their government to issue clear direction and guidance where national policy is not consistent. Work Cited Siegel, Larry J. Criminology. Belmont: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012. Print. Read More