A biographical individual interview is conducted with all participants before the training begins. It helps clarify expectations and provides an opportunity to discuss how the radicalised personality evolved. The interview is also used to clarify training goals and to develop a basis of trust for working in the group. In this interview, the trainers encourage participants to talk about their life stories, their families, their circle of friends, their political and religious orientation, as well as their acts of violence.

After willingness for biographical processing has been determined, the actual biographical work is taken up in the training session. During the biographical processing, the life course is analysed as far as the participants allow it. This process usually reveals breaking points and key events in the participant’s history, which provide a possible explanation for the violence or radicalisation at hand. For group training, the biographical work takes place in the concomitant individual sessions.

There are plenty of opportunities throughout the training programme to think about and confront inhuman ideologies. The discussion with the trainers on topics such as right-wing extremism, religious extremism, traditionalism, rejection and hostility towards people who do not share their point of view and current socio-political issues enables the participants to enter a constructive and non-violent discourse with people who do not share their point of view. Violence Prevention Network explicitly does not use a purely counter-ideological approach but acts on the level of generating empathy with simultaneous ideological discourse, if it is demanded.

In a conversation with the trainer, a participant is of the opinion that infidels are worthless. The language and attitude of the participant himself exhibits a coherent, ideological view of the world and can thus be seen as strongly radicalised. In previous sessions, most of the discussions with the participant were also on an ideological level. The trainer reacts by offering alternative interpretations and disrupting thought patterns.

 He asks: ‘Who is Adam?’

The participant answers. ‘He was a prophet.’

The trainer: ‘Was Adam a man first, or a prophet first?’

The participant thinks about it, but then answers: ‘A human being.’

The trainer: ‘So then you’re primarily a human being too, isn’t it?’ The participant nods.

The trainer now continues and connects this realisation with generating empathy in the participant: ‘Do you still remember one of our previous conversations, when you said that man is a masterpiece of God, didn’t you? How would you feel if you created a work of art, a picture, and someone would come and destroy it without asking you, the owner of the masterpiece?’

‘Well, I would be angry,‘ the participant replies.

In the end, there is a disruptive argument that alludes to a key narrative of the participant’s ideology, the rejection of veneration of saints and polytheism. ‘You say that there is only one God and only he can judge. But what do you think you’re doing when you say that infidels are worth less than believers?’ The participant thinks for a while and finally answers: ‘I am violating Tawhid.’ The trainer has shown the participant a contradiction in his own thinking and triggered a process of self-reflection.

You can read all about our tertiary prevention in prisons in English language here and in German language here.