Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement

This new edited volume expands our understanding of the processes by which individuals and groups disengage from terrorism.

While there has been a growing awareness of the need to understand and prevent processes of radicalization into terrorism, disengagement and deradicalization from terrorism have long been neglected areas in research on terrorism. This book uses empirical data to explore how and why individuals and groups disengage from terrorism, and what can be done to facilitate it. The work also presents a series of case studies of disengagement programmes, from Colombia, northern Europe, Italy, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, comparing and assessing their various strengths and weaknesses. In light of the lessons learned from these cases, this book describes and explains the potential for new developments in counter-terrorism.

This book will be of great interest to all students of terrorism studies, war and conflict studies, international security and politics in general, as well as professionals in the field of counter-terrorism.

Tore Bjorgo is Professor at the Norwegian Police University College and Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He has published extensively on terrorism, racist violence, youth gangs and crime prevention, and is author of Root Causes of Terrorism (2005).

John Horgan is Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at The Pennsylvania State University. He is one of the world’s leading experts on terrorist psychology, and is author of over 50 publications in the field.