Canaries in the coal mine: Interpersonal violence, gang violence, and violent extremism through a public health prevention lens

Abstract

This paper asks what programmes and policies for preventing violent extremism (also called ‘countering violent extremism’, or CVE) can learn from the public health violence prevention field. The general answer is that addressing violent extremism within the wider domain of public health violence prevention connects the effort to a relevant field of research, evidence-based policy and programming, and a broader population reach. This answer is reached by examining conceptual alignments between the two fields at both the case-level and the theoretical level. To address extremist violence within the wider reach of violence prevention, having a shared model is seen as a first step. The World Health Organization uses the social-ecological framework for assessing the risk and protective factors for violence and developing effective public-health based programmes. This study illustrates how this model has been used for gang violence prevention and explores overlaps between gang violence prevention and preventing violent extremism. Finally, it provides policy and programme recommendations to align CVE with public health violence prevention.

Keywords:

• Terrorism
• extremism
• violence
• violence prevention
• gang violence
• public health

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Science and Technology Directorate, United States Department of Homeland Security [Cooperative Agreement 2015-ST-108-FRG006].