Extremist Rehabilitation is Saudi Arabia

Carnegie associate Christopher Boucek recently published a paper titled Saudi Arabia’s ‘Soft’ Counterterrorism Strategy: Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Aftercare. The paper outlines the three elements of the Saudi PRAC program (prevention, rehabilitation, and aftercare). At a presentation of the paper last week he specifically mentioned the success of the rehabilitation stage of the program. Overseen by the Ministry of the Interior, it has four subcommittees: religion, psychological and social, security, and media. Each handle specific functions related to the participants' rehabilitation process. The program is strictly optional, however only those imprisoned for non-violent acts may participate. The paper reports that since the program began in 2003, approximately 3,000 prisoners have done part of the rehabilitation program. 1,400 have completed the program and been released. According to Saudi officials, they claim the program as an 80-90% success rate, but they include in that 10-20% those individuals who refused to do the program. Only 35 individuals have been re-arrested, putting the recidivist rate at 1-2%. For the full report which includes other aspects of PRAC please click here.