The Role of Rehabilitation Programming in Reducing Stigmatization of Terrorist Offenders

Since 2014, there has been a greater emphasis on the need for governments to develop programmes to rehabilitate and reintegrate violent extremists, yet many programmes are witnessing a community backlash to reintegration. Research demonstrates that the successful reintegration of terrorist offenders and ex-combatants depends upon community support - their acceptance by family, friends, neighbors, and peers and the protective pro-social ties they develop with them. Stigma and public opposition to reintegration can act as barriers to successful reintegration. While existing research has focused on community attitudes to reintegration, the following article examines the drivers of supportive behavior and stigmitizing behavior toward the reintegration of terrorist offenders. We then explore the potential of messaging about rehabilitation programming to generate behavioural support for reintegration through a survey experiment on a representative sample of 1,800 adults in the United Kingdom. Our results show that ethnocentrism predicts an intent of stigmatizing behavior and low supportive behavior toward offenders, fear of terrorism predicts an intent of stigmatizing behavior toward offenders, while high trust in police predicts supportive behavior toward terrorist offenders. Our research finds communication of information a terrorist offender has successfully completed a rehabilitation programme - signalling offender redeemability - increases one measure of supportive behavior (social invitation) and decreases one measure of stigmatising behaviour (avoidance). Our findings have practical significance, highlighting areas which reintegration programmes can focus on to increase community support and decrease stigma and community backlash. Gordon Clubb, Mary-Beth Altier, Yoshiharu Kobayashi, Graeme Davies, Eliza Brownsord