NSW Police Counter-Radicalisation Community Engagement Initiative
Jurisdiction
New South Wales, Australia
Year
2010
Outcomes
Resilience
The NSW Police Counter-Radicalisation Community Engagement Initiative aimed to gain community help to identify and divert youth at risk of radicalisation through a community policing approach, including high visibility police presence by liaison officers within the Muslim community, consultations and partnerships.
The initiative included distributing a booklet, ‘Understanding Terrorism Laws’, to increase community knowledge.
Key takeaways
An evaluation of the program found:
- Strong community awareness of the program
- A majority saw it as successful
- There remained pockets of community suspicion and critique, which require attention
- Respondents recommended enhancing the community policing aspects through improving contact, visibility and partnerships.
These findings need to be viewed in the context of the small sample size.
Relevant reports
- Can you use community policing for counter terrorism? Evidence from NSW, Australia, Dunn et al, Police Practice and Research, V17, 3, 2016
- Assessing intervention outcomes targeting radicalised offenders: Testing the pro integration model of extremist disengagement as an evaluation tool, Adrian Cherney and Emma Belton, DOI, 2019