This is the Summary Overview of a study that examined the evaluability of a Community Resilience Exercise (CREX), which is a community-based activity that brings together members of the community, law enforcement, and government officials to learn more about threats of violent extremism (VE) facing the community.
CREX was initially developed as a follow-up to the Community Action Briefings (CAB) delivered to communities through the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC). The CAB is a declassified security briefing tailored to local communities to increase awareness of violent extremist threats in the region. One limitation of the CAB is its inability to deliver solutions to the problems it identifies, indicating that a supplement to the CAB was needed that could leverage the community’s concern about VE with the organization of community resources to mitigate early-stage threats of radicalization and violence. Drawing on the features of a program in the United Kingdom (Project Nichole), CREX was developed to educate communities on the existence of and need to counter violent extremism in their communities; to assist communities in identifying and recognizing the available local resources to address the needs of individuals at risk for violent criminal behavior; and to create the foundation for the development of a community action plan for mobilizing the community if a VE event occurs. After discussing the importance of evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of a CREX, this report describes the methodology and results of a project to determine whether and how the effectiveness of a CREX can be evaluated. 24 references