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Criminology Theory and Terrorism: Introduction to the Special Issue
JOSHUA D. FREILICH
Doctoral Program in Criminal Justice; and Department of Criminal Justice, John Jay College, City University of New York, New York, New York; and National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
GARY LAFREE
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice; and National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
In this short essay, we introduce readers to a special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence on criminological approaches to the study of terrorism. In addition to summarizing the eight articles in the issue, we outline some general points about the relationship between criminological thinking and our understanding of terrorism. Our goal is to place the special issue's contributions in context and highlight under-explored issues that future research could address.
This special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence focuses on criminological approaches to the study of terrorism. Although there has been an explosive growth in research on terrorism across the social and behavioral sciences in the past two decades, much of this work has originated in political science, psychology, and economics. Reviews of criminology and criminal justice research reveal that until recently there have been few empirical tests of the major criminological theories in a terrorism context.1 This is surprising because terrorism clearly falls within the domain of criminology that has been defined as encompassing research on āthe breaking of laws and reactions to the breaking of laws.ā2 As Clarke and Newman put it, āTerrorism is a form of crime in all essential respects.ā3 This special issue's focus on criminological theory and terrorism is unique. We begin by outlining some general points about the relationship between criminological thinking and our understanding of terrorism. The goal is to place the special issue's contributions in context and highlight under-explored issues that future research could address.
Although recently there has been an increase in studies that apply criminological theories to terrorism (or test them in a terrorism context), not all of criminology's major theories have been equally engaged. Most criminological terrorism studies to date have focused on neoclassical models like routine activities,4 rational choice,5 and situational crime prevention (SCP).6 For example, past studies have examined whether target hardening, such as metal detectors and increased inspections at airports, or the use of statutes decrease terrorism through deterrence or incapacitation or instead lead to increased terrorism through backlash effects.7
There is thus a need for criminologists to broaden their inquiry to include criminology's other major frameworks like social learning, classic strain theories, social control, life course, and psychological and biological perspectives. This special issue takes a step in this direction and includes studies that focus on anomie/strain, social disorganization, and routine activities frameworks that have rarely been applied to terrorism.
Pisoiu's qualitative study of seven jihadi and far-right case studies in Germany, for instance, tests elements of criminology's strain and sub-cultural perspectives. She finds little support for the strain-based status frustration hypothesis. But her findings do support the illegitimate opportunity structure thesis and certain sub-cultural claims such as resistance, bricolage, homology, agency, and cultural cross-fertilization. Pisoiu concludes that the violent extremists in her study were assertive and purposive agents who strategically used the cultural arsenal available in the mainstream and/or other subcultures, while at the same time being themselves influenced by contemporary style preferences. She calls for a greater focus on individual agency and the (sub-)cultural to improve understanding of individual involvement in political violence.
Chermak and Gruenewald use data from the United States Extremist Crime Database to compare individual and contextual socio-demographic characteristics across far-right, far-left, and jihadi extremists who committed violent crimes. They identify similarities, but also many differences across these violent extremists on both the individual and county levels. Importantly, Chermak and Gruenewald consider whether these violent extremists, similar to more typical non-extremist offenders, experience an identity crisis caused by the strain of wanting to achieve the goals of society but having inadequate means to achieve them. Far-rightists were less educated and less successful in the labor market, while jihadis may have been unable to integrate fully into American communities. By contrast, Chermak and Gruenewald find that members of far-left groups have the means to achieve the goals of American society but conclude that the āAmerican Dreamā is dubious and harmful, especially to the environment and/or other species. Chermak and Gruenewald highlight the importance of considering the macro contexts in which terrorists choose to act. They assert that future research would benefit from using criminological theories like social disorganization to further explain the differences they observed.
Fahey and LaFree's study addresses Chermak and Gruenewald's last point by examining the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. The authors conceive of social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social changes will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. The authors examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities occurring in countries. Fahey and LaFree find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities.
Meanwhile, Parkin and Freilich provide one of the few empirical studies on the victims of terrorist attacks.8 Most prior terrorism studies examine incidents or perpetrators and ignore victims, assuming that they are a random selection of the population and that there is no variation to explain. Using data from the Extremist Crime Database, Parkin and Freilich compare the victims of two sets of homicides committed by far-rightists: ideologically motivated homicides committed to further far-right ideology (closely related to terrorism) and homicides committed for personal reasons by far-rightists (ordinary crime). To explain this variation in victimization, they apply and test several hypotheses from criminology's routine activities and lifestyle perspectives. Parkin and Freilich's findings support their prediction that the two victims groupsā routine activities differ, thus varying their exposure to dangerous places and people.
More in keeping with past research, the other four studies in this special issue examine aspects of deterrence and rational choice theory and situational crime prevention perspectives. These studies engage a wide range of issues and also address important gaps in the literature. Using data on six major initiatives meant to reduce terrorist attacks by the Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain, Argomaniz and Vidal-Diez replicate earlier research by LaFree, Dugan, and Korte that tested deterrence (based upon a rational choice model) and backlash frameworks applied to attacks by the IRA in Northern Ireland.9 Argomaniz and Vidal-Diez used survival analysis to analyze data from the Global Terrorism Database and the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. Similar to the LaFree, Dugan, and Korte study, their findings mostly supported backlash interpretations.
Perry and Hasisi use criminology's rational choice theory to analyze the motivations of jihadist suicide attackers. They argue that while suicide attackers engage in self-destructive behavior, they are mostly driven not by altruistic motivation but by the anticipation of future self-gratifying benefits. Perry and Hasisi conclude that there is no fundamental difference between terrorist perpetratorsā motivations and those of more ordinary criminals. Consistent with rational choice perspectives, both sets of offenders are committed to maximizing self-gratifying, beneficial behavior.
Hsu and Apel extend the Perry and Hasisi analysis by empirically examining a common critique of the SCP argument that we can reduce terrorism by manipulating the opportunities that allow terrorist acts to succeed. The key criticism of SCP interventions is that they are ineffective because they only displace attacks to other locations, crime types, or perpetrators. Terrorism researchers refer to this displacement critique as the āsubstitution effect.ā10 Hsu and Apel investigate various forms of displacement among terrorist groups that had been involved in aviation attacks prior to the installation of airport metal detectors. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database, their findings from interrupted time series models partially support SCP claims and suggest a complex set of displacement and diffusion effects with respect to alternative attack modes, target types, and weapon usage. Hsu and Apel's study has important implications for policy makers as well as the conceptual literature in criminology and terrorism studies.
Braithwaite and Johnson test three criminological perspectives to shed light on the observed patterns of the incidence and contagion of recent insurgent attacks in Baghdad, Iraq. Their analysis shows that risk heterogeneity arguments provide the most compelling and consistent account of the location of insurgency. In particular, violence is most likely at locations with higher population levels and density of roads and more military garrisons.
Collectively the eight studies in this special issue break new ground by empirically testing criminological perspectives like social disorganization, routine activities, and classic strain that have rarely been examined in a terrorism context. They also address gaps in the examination of neo-classical approaches. These are important steps but more needs to be done. Criminologists should empirically examine other influential criminological theories like social learning, general strain, life course, biological, and psychological approaches in a terrorism context.
And indeed some earlier work by criminologists suggests some promising theoretical possibilities. Akers and Silverman crafted a conceptual piece extending social learning theory to terrorism;11 Black applied his theory of social control to explain terrorism;12 Hamm used social learning theory (and routine activities theory) to understand the criminal successes and failures of terrorists;13 Bouhana and Wikstrom developed a situational action theory that they apply to both terrorist attacks and ordinary crimes;14 and Agnew extended his general strain theory to explain terrorism.15 However, with rare exceptions,16 thus far there have been few efforts to apply systematic empirical methods to test these theories with data on terrorism.
One reason for this lack of research could be due to data availability. In criminology, data on illegal behavior come traditionally from three sources, corresponding to the major social roles connected to criminal events: āofficialā data collected by legal agents, especially the police; āvictimizationā data collected from the general population of victims and non-victims; and āself-reportā data collected from offenders (see also Parkin and Freilich in this issue).17 All three of these sources are problematic when it comes to collecting data on terrorism. While police departments and other criminal justice agencies gather vast amounts of detailed official data on common crimes in most countries, this is rarely the case for terrorism. Part of the difficulty is differing definitions of terrorism across countries and even between different agencies in the same country. Moreover, terrorist acts often cut across several more common types of criminal categories. Thus, an assassinatio...
