WASHINGTON (AP) – In the last two months two Minnesota men have admitted they plotted to travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State, a New Jersey man pleaded guilty to helping his brother fly to the Middle East to join extremists and a 20-year-old intercepted at a Chicago airport took responsibility for backing the terror group.
The defendants, among dozens arrested in the last year, will ultimately be released into the society they railed against. Even as the Obama administration launches programs to keep young adults from embracing extremist messages in the first place, there’s broad agreement that more needs to be done to de-radicalize terror suspects who entered prison after absorbing the violent ideology of the Islamic State and will someday return to neighborhoods.
“Not addressing these issues in the correctional facilities, you run the risk of the person being more of an extremist” than before, said John Cohen, a Rutgers professor of criminal justice and former counterterrorism coordinator at the Homeland Security Department.
Concerns about prisoner rehabilitation obviously aren’t limited to terror suspects, but the issue has gained fresh attention as the FBI continues its arrests of American supporters of the Islamic State group. The FBI and Justice Department, acknowledging that prosecutions aren’t the entire answer, have begun discussing more openly the need for community and family intervention before legal trouble occurs, and for ensuring convicts have access to services before rejoining their communities.
The Bureau of Prisons holds about 350 prisoners with a history of, or connection to, international terrorism, said spokesman Ed Ross. Only a fraction will remain imprisoned for life. Roughly 100 of them are due for release within five years.