Government Agency-Focused Best Practices to Prevent Violent Extremism

While Summit participants widely supported making government services available to underserved communities, one delegation stressed that the goal should be to foster empowerment, and cautioned that it is important to avoid contributing to a victim-focused identity in communities.

These findings come from the Report on the National Summit on Empowering Communities to Prevent Violent Extremism. In August 2014, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) partnered with START to coordinate a National Summit on Empowering Communities to Prevent Violent Extremism. The recommendations included in the full report reflect the major themes that emerged, focusing on those that the participants appeared to support through debate and dialogue across the two-day event.

For a copy of the full report on this topic, please see the COPS website at http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-p326-pub.pdf.