Preventing youth extremism: finding the optimal model

The paper is devoted to the problem of preventing youth extremism. Based on the author's position, the prevention system in this area ought to be based on the interrelation, determinacy and hierarchy of various deterrent and neutralizing measures of a general social, coercive-preventive, administrative-tort, criminally-legal and penal-executive nature. Such a system should be a self-sustaining and self-reproducing normative-institutional mechanism, where a delinquent deals with an integrated set of social and legal norms, repeating incrementally measures (forms) of preventive and repressive coercion. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of criminal law measures for extremist crimes in the context of the specific age and motivation of their perpetrators. On the authors' view, the conceptual idea of preventing youth extremism should be to prioritize spiritual and moral education over punitive influences. A comprehensive model for the prevention of youth extremism, taking into account its structural and functional content, is proposed as a result of the study.