The US cannot arrest its way out of violent extremism

This October, the first American convicted on Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-related charges is set to be released. Shannon Maureen Conley of Colorado was convicted in 2015 for attempting travel to the so-called Islamic State. In court, she claimed to have completely rejected jihad, and her psychiatric evaluation found that she has severe mental health issues, but “she is not a terrorist.”

The sentencing judge referenced her psychiatric problems and youth as an explanation for her crimes. “She has no history in the criminal justice system,” Judge Raymond P. Moore pointed out. “She is very young. … Teenagers make dumb decisions a lot.” Prosecutors later convinced Moore to hand down a harsher sentence to deter other would-be Islamist extremists.

{mosads}A January report by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) muddles the narrative of a troubled young woman who made a mistake. In the report, “U.S. Homegrown Violent Extremism Recidivism Likely,” NCTC warned that Conley has “repelled repeated radicalization ‘off-ramping’ attempts” by officials and her family. Her psychiatric evaluation and criminal history misled, rather than informed, the judge about her dedication to violent Islamism and her threat to American communities.

Her case is not unique. Judges usually factor defendant’s’ criminal history into their sentences. But that measurement can become a liability when three-fourths of ISIS-related defendants had no prior criminal record. Conley exposed the tool missing from the U.S. judicial system: threat assessments built around violent extremist crimes.

In prisons, failure to detect inmate radicalization can be disastrous. In 2011, a Texas inmate and open member of the United Aryan Brotherhood prison gang tried to kill his Jewish cellmate, later explaining in no uncertain terms that his cellmate religion was the sole motive. There are over 100 white supremacist prison gangs across the country with thousands of members, many radicalized while behind bars.

Some judges have tried to gauge an extremist defendant’s threat themselves. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia publicly expressed this anxiety in 2015: “Judges [are]…trying to decide, well, if this person is fifty years old, are they likely to come out and try to shoot up the Holocaust Museum? Are they likely to try to blow up Metro?

You have to make a judgment based on what you have seen, and that is all you can do.” His fears are not unfounded. According to NCTC, “at least some of the more than 90 homegrown violent extremists incarcerated in the U.S. who are due to be released in the next five years will probably reengage in terrorist activity, possibly including attack plotting. 

Faced with the rise of extremist cases and the sustained threat of radicalization in prisons, judges and wardens need additional tools to determine a convicted extremist’s ideological fervor and threat. A report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy calls for standardized threat assessments to clarify sentencing and prisoner management for each offender. Standardized threat assessments for violent extremist defendants — just as exist for mainstream defendants — reduce risks on all sides of the judicial process. In the courtroom, accurate assessments ensure judicious sentencing, with the possibility of “de-radicalization” programs for low-threat defendants. In prisons, assessments give wardens insight on how to properly handle an extremist detainee while preventing the radicalization of other inmates. Back on Main Street, parole officers will be better able to design probation programs and monitor released extremist offenders. 

Experts across the board agree on the need to evaluate a violent extremist’s potential for recidivism and de-radicalization. NCTC calls for training prison officials with “specialized countering violent extremism and counterterrorism capabilities” to “identify violent extremist radicalization and mobilization to violence indicators.”

The structure for extremism threat assessments is already being built. Last year, six young men convicted of attempting travel to the Islamic State came before the court of Senior U.S. District Judge for the District of Minnesota Michael J. Davis. Like some of his colleagues, Davis saw the need to evaluate these defendants, guilty of the same crime but disparate in their relationship with ISIS ideology. Davis flew to Germany to meet with noted de-radicalization expert Daniel Koehler, whom he then brought to Minnesota to evaluate the six defendants’ dedication to jihadism and potential for de-radicalization.

After months of interviews, Koehler testified on his findings and identified Abdullahi Yusuf as the most favorable candidate for de-radicalization. The teenaged Yusuf had been arrested before boarding a plane to Syria, and testified in court against his co-conspirators in the travel plans. By testifying against these “former friends,” Yusuf claimed that he was finally thinking for himself. Davis drew from Koehler’s recommendations in sentencing the six defendants, and gave Yusuf an opportunity to participate in an “off-ramping” rehabilitation program.

We do not yet know the results of Judge Davis’ experiment in Minnesota, but it is clear that he has touched on a nerve in the judicial system. Without credible threat assessments, judges and prison administrators are left to their individual perceptions, worrying, like Judge Lee, what their decisions will mean for public safety.

The United States has the excellence of thousands of experts and probation officers to assess and monitor a violent extremist’s dedication to the cause. We owe our public servants every tool to make the most informed decisions for our communities.

Maxine Rich is a research assistant in The Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill