The Prevention of Terrorism and Rehabilitation of Terrorists: Some Preliminary Thoughts,
Abstract
Despite many other disagreements among experts on terrorism, it is at least agreed that individuals who become terrorists feel alienated from society. This alienation may be the product of distinct social, economic, political, or psychological factors or a combination of them. The person who drifts into terrorism, then, feels himself to be an outsider. His self-perception as an outsider may be based on his ethnic or religious affiliation, his inability to find personally satisfying or financially rewarding employment or his estrangement from the political mainstream in his country, or he may regard himself as one of the few true idealists in an unjust world. Thus, being impressionable, many terrorists are perfectly good prospects for psychological efforts at rebuilding their thought structure. But even though they may be very open to such efforts, the number of appeals to which they may respond is perhaps very limited. Economic appeals will rarely be enough, at least not to the very limited extent such appeals can be made in reality. Except for those on the lowest levels, ideas may well be the lever with which to move them, be it in the direction of forsaking terrorism or in the direction of preventing them from taking it up in the first place. Above all, perhaps, they will probably respond to being taken seriously and respected as individuals, because that is precisely what they lacked most in their youth, and, it appears, craved most. How to do this in actual detail is, of course, a different matter.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA154972
Entities
People
- B. Hoffman
Organizations
- RAND Corporation