The Good Lives Model and the Trajectories Away from Islamist Extremism

Existing research in terrorism primarily focuses on the risk factors that function as the driving force for individuals' involvement in violent extremism (Marsden & Lee, 2022; Ward et al., 2012).

However, understanding the protective factors against violent extremism from the strength-based approach informs the needs of individuals, both primary and secondary, and can potentially mitigate the risk of recidivism.

Recent research and evidence from different contexts suggest that the strength-based approach, such as the Good Lives Model (GLM) and the Worldview Model (Wilkinson & Quraishi, 2023), has the tools to understand individuals' needs and develop a nuanced understanding of these needs has practical implications for those engaged in the PCVE space (Munden et al., 2023).

The proposed research aims to understand the trajectories away from Islamist extremism using the GLM.

It will identify the goods individuals seek in various stages of engagement in Islamist extremism and the barriers they encounter in fulfilling the goods.

Subsequently, it will examine the usefulness of the GLM for practitioners involved in various PCVE roles, such as policing, custodial, and counselling.

PCVE practitioners could benefit from the detailed knowledge of offenders' needs, and a nuanced understanding of offenders' barriers, belief systems and aspirations could help tackle violent extremism (Adams et al., 2023).

Moreover, countries such as the UK and USA, where the governments see extremism as a growing threat, could benefit from the study's empirical findings on offenders' needs to develop deradicalisation programmes.