The Confederation of European Probation (CEP) held a seminar on 12 November 2020 on the subject of Radicalisation Prevention in probation, organised within the framework of the EU-CoE project ´Radicalisation Prevention, Judicial response to Terrorism and International Cooperation in Criminal Matters (RP-TERR-ICCM)´, in which the CEP are partners. The seminar was a good opportunity to hear from experts and to exchange best practices and ideas on the subject, through active discussions in group sessions.

CEP Secretary General Mr. Willem van der Brugge opened the meeting giving a short description of CEP as organisation and mentioned several of its activities in the field of (de)radicalisation: three European projects, an international expert group and a specific button in the knowledgebase of the CEP website.

Eva Massa Arranz, HELP project coordinator, highlighted that during the Covid-19 pandemic there had been a rise of radicalization offences, especially online, and that therefore this topic continues to be a priority area for the EU and the CoE. She presented the Project and the three HELP courses included in it: Radicalisation Prevention, Managing Foreign National Prisoners and International Cooperation in Criminal Matters.

Maarten van de Donk, staff member of the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) explained RAN as organisation consisting of many working groups and is responsible for training on radicalisation awareness and dealing with radicalised persons. He mentioned the current challenges for RAN: the return of foreign terrorist fighters, the rise of right wing violent extremism, stigmatization by the society, and the necessity of doing evaluation.

Professor Ioan Durnescu from the University of Bucharest indicated that of the aims of the seminar was to further develop the HELP online course, with the contribution of participants. He went through the structure of the course as well as through the aims & objectives, and after that spoke of the difficulties and various aspects of working with VEO’s (Violent Extremist Offenders): about engagement, working alliance, assessment tools and effective interventions based on the “theory of change”.

The group split up in two smaller groups for active discussions on the course content and structure. The two parallel sessions lasted half an hour after which the chairs (Willem van der Brugge and Ioan Durnescu) presented the results of their session to the rest of the group.

This seminar will be followed up by the launch of the HELP course on Radicalisation Prevention for probation staff in February 2021.

The HELP online course on Radicalisation Prevention is available in 6 languages on the HELP e-learning platform.