By Gary LaFree

In recent years, nutrition researchers have found that ice cream may have as many health benefits as low-fat milk or yoghurt for those with diabetes or at risk of diabetes. Nonetheless, they have resisted reporting this finding to the media, the public, or other researchers. This observation got me thinking about how preconceived assumptions and biases affect social science in general and criminology in particular, are affected by the preconceived assumptions and biases of those who produce them. In this essay, I argue that the production of criminology is a cultural enterprise that reflects the attitudes and values of those who produce it. In my address for the Stockholm Prize, I summarize the main thesis of my Losing Legitimacy book and then discuss two recent projects that were influenced by the idea that strong social institutions reduce criminal behavior. The first examines the impact of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 on crime and arrest rates. The second examines the impact of globalization on national homicide rates. In both cases, the results were unexpected.

Policy Implications

As scientists, it is critical that we evaluate research based on its theoretical soundness and methodological sophistication rather than whether it fits a currently hot topic or politically popular perspective. Science progresses by the constant process of evaluating theoretical propositions with empirical data—regardless of where those data lead us. Openness about crime and reactions to crime is no less important than honesty about the positive benefits of ice-cream consumption.

Criminology and Public Policy, 2025, 19p.

By Alexander Ritzmann With contributions by Jean-Yves Camus, Joshua Fisher-Birch, Bulcsú Hunyadi, Jacek Purski and Jakub Woroncow  

• This report explores the role of antisemitism in mobilizing extremist and terrorist actors to violence, focusing on trends and patterns across France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the United States. It discusses antisemitic narratives, key antisemitic actors, transnational connections, dissemination strategies, and provides policy recommendations. • Antisemitic narratives serve as tools to justify violence across ideological lines, framing Jewish communities and individuals as threats or scapegoats. Rightwing extremists propagate conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement,” portraying Jews as orchestrating adverse societal change. Islamist extremists often conflate Jewish identity with global oppression, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Left-wing extremists link Jews to capitalism or imperialism, using antizionism to mask antisemitism. These narratives are adapted to local and geopolitical contexts, reinforcing the targeting of Jewish communities and individuals. • The report documents a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war. Violent antisemitic rhetoric has spiked in demonstrations and online discourses. Islamist extremist networks, left-wing extremist actors and pro-Palestinian extremist groups have particularly amplified violent antisemitic sentiments under the guise of antizionist rhetoric, sometimes overlapping with traditional right-wing antisemitic themes. • Transnational networks facilitate the spread of antisemitic narratives. Right-wing extremist groups connect online and through events and annual marches, while Islamist extremist groups leverage shared ideological or religious frameworks to justify violence. Left-wing extremist and pro-Palestinian extremist groups maintain operations across Europe and in the U.S., amplifying violent antisemitic narratives. Shared slogans, symbols, and coordinated protests underline their interconnectedness. • In some countries, an increase in violent attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets has been documented. • The report emphasizes that the concept of combatting organized antisemitism should be added to strategies that aim at targeting violence-oriented antisemitic actors. Such professional organized antisemitic actors often operate in (transnational) networks, utilizing online platforms and offline activities to propagate hate and justify or conduct violence. • The report also calls attention to the role of states like the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation in fostering violent antisemitism through proxies and propaganda. • Policy recommendations include focusing on identifying and disrupting key antisemitic actors, enhancing data collection and analysis, and fostering international collaboration. The report also stresses the need for tailored preventative and educational initiatives and stricter online content regulation and enforcement to combat the spread of antisemitism and its violent manifestations. 

Counter Extremism Project, 2025. 153p.

By Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Bennett Clifford, Lorenzo Vidino

Executive Summary • Antisemitism is pervasive throughout several categories of American extremist movements, both violent and non-violent. American extremists incorporate antisemitic tropes and narratives in every level of their worldviews, using them to help construct “us/them” dichotomies and wide-sweeping conspiracies that are essential to their movements. • During the past several decades, the American extremist movements that have been among the most violent—specifically, far-right and jihadist groups—have used antisemitism to target Jewish people, Jewish houses of worship, Jewish community institutions, and Americans supporting the Jewish state of Israel. • Antisemitism, as a belief and world-structuring theory, can at times serve as a gateway issue for individuals into further radicalization to violent extremism. Nonviolent and violent iterations of the same extremist milieus often share antisemitic views as central elements of their belief system, and thus antisemitism constitutes a linkage between activist and violent extremist segments of the same movement. • Several case studies of violent American extremists, representing far-right and jihadist movements respectively, demonstrate that antisemitism can be an integral part of American extremists’ progression through the radicalization process and in justifying terrorist attacks. • Based on this report’s finding that antisemitism is foundational to multiple violent extremist movements in the United States, counter-extremism practitioners and scholars may consider incorporating antisemitism as a diagnostic factor for extremist radicalization. o While there is no single profile of an American extremist, antisemitism has long been widespread among American extremist movements of multiple persuasions, acting as a least common denominator between extremist groups. o Antisemitic beliefs often serve as a key entry point for individuals to radicalize, join extremist groups, and progress into violent mobilization. o By using promotion of antisemitism as a factor in identifying key influencers and ideologues in extremist movements, Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programming can isolate key nodes in extremist groups and debunk the narratives they promote without engaging in theological debates. o Studying the role of antisemitism in extremist groups can assist scholars in identifying common themes between different types of extremism, as well as between non-violent and violent strands of the same extremist movements. This can improve analysis on the broader relationships between and within extremist groups.

Washington DC: Program on Extremism, George Washington University, 2020. 27p.

By Mohamed Bin Ali and Ahmad Saiful Rijal Bin Hassan

Far-right extremism based on racial and extremist ideologies is finding resonance among some Singaporean youth, posing a challenge to the country’s counterradicalisation strategies, which had been based on religiously motivated extremism. The Singapore authorities need to review their counter-radicalisation frameworks as they grapple with this emerging threat.

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU 2025. 4p.

By Mathias Bak, Kristoffer Nilaus Tarp, and Christina Schori Liang

During the last few decades, the concept of violent extremism (VE) has played an increasingly prominent role in policies and development programming on a global level. Having gone through several incarnations, the current focus for most actors deals with preventing and countering violent extremism. This terminology was constructed in an effort to repackage the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in a manner that shifted the focus away from the over-militarised responses of the 90s and early 2000s, to methods linked to social support and prevention. Where counterterrorism focuses on countering terrorists through physical means, the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) approach aims to prevent the rise of violent extremist organisations (VEOs) through less militarised methods. P/CVE programs therefore aim at developing resilience among communities that may be prone to violent extremism.

According to the 2015 UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, such interventions aim to address the root causes and drivers of violent extremism, which often include: socio-economic issues; discrimination; marginalization; poor governance; human rights violations; remnants of violent conflict; collective grievances; and other psychological factors. The concept of violent extremism has also become increasingly mainstream in the international community, with both the UN Security Council (UNSC 2014)2 and the UN General Assembly3 (UNGA 2015) calling for member states to address VE.

Geneva Paper 24/19, Geneva, SWIT: Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2019. 40p.

By Zoe Marchment, Caitlin Clemmow, Paul Gill

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows. The EGM has three main objectives: (1) Identify the strength (in terms of evidence quality) and depth (in terms of volume of evidence) of evidence base on the efficacy of situational crime prevention measures in preventing terrorist attacks against soft targets and crowded places. (2) Identify the heterogeneity in the effects of situational crime prevention measures against terrorist attacks and link this to issues related to context and implementation. (3) Identify the mechanisms through which situational crime prevention measures have an effect on terrorist attacks. To achieve these objectives, an EGM will seek out reliable quantitative evidence on effect and qualitative evidence on mechanisms, moderators, implementation and economics. Resultingly, it will be possible to identify research gaps and evidence imbalances to facilitate research investment, identify gaps and topics for new research, and provide a foundation for systematic reviews by showing where sufficient evidence exists for aggregation. The underpinning programme of work will result in the presentation of rigorous empirical research on this topic to help researchers and decision-makers understand the available evidence.

Campbell Systematic Reviews, Volume21, Issue2, June 2025, 12p.

By Triana McNeil

  A hate crime occurs nearly every hour in the U.S., based on data reported to the FBI. Investigations of recent hate crimes have suggested that exposure to hate speech on the internet may have contributed to the attackers’ biases against their victims. In 2021, the FBI placed hate crimes at the same national threat priority level as preventing domestic violent extremism. GAO was asked to review information on hate crimes and hate speech on the internet. This report examines (1) the extent to which DOJ collects data on hate crimes that occur on the internet, (2) what company data indicate about steps selected companies have taken to remove hate speech and violent extremist speech from their internet platforms, and (3) what is known about users’ experience with, or expression of, hate speech on the internet, and its relationship to hate crimes and domestic violent extremism. GAO analyzed U.S. hate crime data and interviewed DOJ officials. GAO analyzed data and interviewed officials from six selected companies operating internet platforms with publicly available policies prohibiting hate and violent extremist speech. GAO assessed peer reviewed and nonprofit studies that described hate speech on the internet, hate crimes, and domestic violent extremist incidents. What GAO Recommends GAO recommends that BJS explore options to measure bias-related criminal victimization that occurs on the internet through the National Crime Victimization Survey or in a supplemental survey, as appropriate. BJS agreed with this recommendation.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024. 87p.

By Alex Goldenberg, Joel Finkelstein,

In the predawn hours of September 12, 2001, on board a helicopter heading from Liberty State Park to State Police Headquarters, I had my first opportunity since the terrorist attacks the previous morning to wonder, “how the hell did they pull this off?” It was inconceivable to me, with the trillions of dollars our nation had spent on a global early warning system to prevent another Pearl Harbor surprise attack, that we were unable to prevent the 9/11 attacks or, with the exception of the heroism of the passengers and crew of United 93, to stop them in progress. The question haunted me for the remainder of my term as New Jersey’s Attorney General and beyond until, as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I was able to help piece together precisely how the terrorists managed to succeed. At every turn, they hid in plain sight. They traveled openly and freely among the Americans they despised, then disappeared when circumstances warranted. Specifically, on the day of 9/11 itself, the first thing the hijackers did once they secured the cockpits was to turn off the transponders that identified the aircraft to military and civilian controllers. This had the effect of making the planes’ radar signals disappear into the clutter of raw radar data, making it extremely difficult to track the planes. A lot has changed in the years since the 9/11 attacks happened and the 9/11 Commission Report was issued. There were no smart phones then, no Twitter or Instagram, no Google or Snapchat. The revolution in communication technology since has transformed both the way we live and the tactics employed by the extremists who want to kill us. What has remained constant, however, is the extremists’ strategy of using the instrumentalities of freedom recursively in order to destroy it, and the challenge to governments to anticipate the new generations of tactics in order to frustrate their employment. The Report you are about to read, “Cyber Swarming: Memetic Warfare and Viral Insurgency,” represents a breakthrough case study in the capacity to identify cyber swarms and viral insurgencies in nearly real time as they are developing in plain sight. The result of an analysis of over 100 million social media comments, the authors demonstrate how the “boogaloo meme,” “a joke for some, acts as a violent meme that circulates instructions for a violent, viral insurgency for others.” Using it, like turning off the transponders on 9/11, enables the extremists to hide in plain sight, disappearing into the clutter of innocent messages, other data points. It should be of particular concern, the authors note, for the military, for whom “the meme’s emphasis on military language and culture poses a special risk.” Because most of law enforcement and the military remain ignorant of “memetic warfare,” the authors demonstrate, extremists who employ it “possess a distinct advantage over government officials and law enforcement.” As with the 9/11 terrorists, “they already realize that they are at war. Public servants cannot afford to remain ignorant of this subject because as sites, followers, and activists grow in number, memes can reach a critical threshold and tipping point, beyond which they can suddenly saturate and mainstream across entire cultures.” This Report is at once an urgent call to recognize an emerging threat and a prescription for how to counter it. As such, it offers that rarest of opportunities: the chance to stop history from repeating itself.

The Network Contagion Research Institute , 2021. 11p.

Edited by Giray SADIK  

According to Strategic Concept 2022, terrorism, which poses the immediate asymmetric and transnational threat, is one of two main threats to NATO. Even though NATO’s focus is currently directed to the other main threat, Russia, particularly after its war against Ukraine, terrorism has remained a major threat across the NATO territory and periphery. Besides, the adaptations of terrorist organizations in response to current wars such as the one in Ukraine are likely to exacerbate terrorist threats for NATO Allies and partners. Therefore, there is an ongoing need for research and learning around global terrorism landscape and its implications for NATO. To this end, this research aims to identify the lessons learned for NATO from the RussiaUkraine war for countering terrorism effectively. Russia’s war on Ukraine since February 2022 has led to dramatic changes in global geopolitics and the all-encompassing domains of security, connectivity, and modern warfare. Although significant and widespread, the effects of this ongoing war on global terrorism have yet to be comprehensively analyzed. To address this gap in a timely manner, this project aims to examine the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war on terrorism through expert discussions on the contemporary trends and lessons learned for global counter-terrorism efforts, and NATO Allies and Partners. To this end, we organized a workshop in hybrid format (in-person and online) with the contributing authors of the edited book. Workshop participants include academics, practitioners, and subject matter experts from various NATO Allies and Partners.   

Ankara, Turkey: Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism (COE-DAT) , 2025.   138p.

By Shai Farber

  This systematic review unveils significant convergence between cybercriminals and terrorists over the past decade, characterized by substantial overlap in tactics, capabilities, and infrastructure exploitation. Key findings illuminate the adoption of cybercriminal methods by terrorist organizations, the engagement of cybercriminal groups in terrorist activities, the proliferation of enabling technologies such as cryptocurrencies and the dark web, and the role of social media in facilitating knowledge exchange between diverse threat actors. While direct terrorist involvement in proftdriven cybercrime appears limited, the escalating convergence underscores urgent imperatives for enhanced cooperation, legal refinement, the establishment of flexible counter-threat authorities, and collaboration with the private sector. Continuous monitoring of this rapidly evolving landscape is crucial to inform effective policies and interventions in an increasingly interconnected digital world.

Security Journal (2025), 23p.

By Nina Wilén and Kwesi Aning

Over the past decade, Western and multilateral security interventions in the Sahel have failed to stabilize the region, while national and local efforts, particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso, have remained largely militarized. These approaches have proven ineffective in addressing the underlying causes of instability, such as food insecurity, lack of basic services, and limited economic opportunities. The key lesson learned is that military action alone cannot resolve the Sahel’s security crisis—political engagement from local, national, and regional actors is crucial.

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e. V. 2 COUNTER EXTREMISM PROJECT, 2025// 28p.

By Marzia Giambertoni

lthough U.S. policymakers face a variety of complex challenges in addressing transnational terrorism, one underappreciated aspect is Hezbollah's evolving presence in Latin America. Academic literature and government reports almost universally indicate that Hezbollah's activities in the region pose potential threats to U.S. national security. However, there is a significant knowledge gap in existing assessments. In this paper, the author offers an initial exploration of Hezbollah's operational footprint in Latin America, focusing on illicit funding mechanisms, violent operations, and key operational hubs — particularly in the Tri-Border Area and Venezuela. The analysis situates these activities within the broader context of Iran's regional diplomatic, economic, and cultural activities, which partially facilitate conditions amenable to Hezbollah's operations.

The author draws from a variety of open-source materials and reviews publicly available information to provide a foundation for understanding how Hezbollah's networks in Latin America are characterized and discussed publicly. By analyzing the group's operational strategies and historical precedents, the author's framing identifies actionable considerations for U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) leadership while raising awareness of the organization's presence among a broader community of stakeholders. These findings are significant for both DHS and DoD, given the former's counterterrorism mandate in Latin America and the latter's strategic interests in the region. Hezbollah's evolving presence warrants careful consideration from defense planners to effectively address potential challenges to U.S. interests and regional stability.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 20p.

By Jillian Peterson, ; Gina Erickson; Kyle Knapp, James Densley

Understanding the motivation of a mass shooter’s intent to do harm can help practitioners and policy makers develop more effective intervention strategies. OBJECTIVE To examine the prevalence of communication of intent to do harm, known as leakage, in a sample of 170 mass public shooters from 1966 to 2019; the characteristics of perpetrators who do and do not leak their plans; and whether leakage is a form of fame-seeking behavior or a cry for help among individuals who are in crisis or suicidal. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study included perpetrators who killed 4 or more people in a public space from 1996 to 2019 and were included in a comprehensive database of US mass shootings. That database was built from August 2017 to December 2019, and analysis took place from January to May 2021. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Leakage was identified and coded using publicly available records. Any communication to a third party of an intent to do harm prior to the shooting was coded as leakage. Logistic regression models were used to examine the risk factors associated with leakage. Models estimating leakage were examined to assess the 2 hypothesized pathways to leakage (the cry-for-help model and the fame-seeking model). RESULTS The 170 participants in this sample included 166 (97.7%) male perpetrators and 3 (2.3%) female perpetrators, with a mean (SD) age of 34 (12) years. Overall, 161 participants had known race and ethnicity: 11 (6.8%) Asian individuals, 35 (21.7%) Black individuals, 14 (8.7%) Latinx individuals, 7 (4.4%) Middle Eastern individuals, 3 (1.9%) Native American individuals, 89 (55.3%) White individuals, and 2 (1.2%) individuals with other race and ethnicity. Overall, 79 mass shooters (46.5%) leaked their plans. Of perpetrators who leaked their plans, 35 (44.3%) leaked specific plans about a mass shooting, and 44 (55.1%) leaked nonspecific plans about generalized violence. The study findings indicate that leakage was associated with receiving counseling (odds ratio, 7.0; 95% CI, 2.0-24.8) and suicidality (odds ratio, 3.7; 95% CI, 1.0-13.6), suggesting that leakage may best be characterized as a cry for help from perpetrators prior to their act. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this study, nearly half of the perpetrators of mass shootings leaked their plans. Leakage was associated with receiving counseling and suicidality. Leakage is a critical moment for mental health intervention to prevent gun violence. Opportunities to report threats of violence need to be increased. Traditional threat assessment models focused on specific threats of violence may miss critical opportunities for intervention. 

JAMA Network Open. 2021, 9p.

By Alex Nowraster

A total of 298 mass shooters were responsible for 1,733 murders and 2,459 people injured in the United States from 1966 through the end of 2024. Over the 59 years studied here, the chance of being murdered by a mass shooter was about 1 in 9.1 million per year, and the annual chance of being injured was about 1 in 6.4 million. The murder victims of mass shooters account for about 0.15 percent of all homicides from 1966 through the end of 2024, but that percentage has risen in recent years. The deadliest year for mass shootings was 2017, when 14 shooters murdered 130 people and injured 959 others, accounting for 0.7 percent of all homicides in that year. Of those 298 shooters, 255 were native-born and 43 were foreign-born. The chance of being murdered in a mass shooting committed by a native-born American was about 1 in 10.5 million per year, about 6.5 times higher than the chance of being killed by a foreign-born mass shooter, which was about 1 in 68.4 million per year. The annual chance of being injured by a foreign-born mass shooter was about 1 in 94.7 million, and the chance of being injured by a native-born shooter was about 1 in 6.9 million per year. About 14.4 percent of mass shooters were foreign born, and they were responsible for 13.3 percent of murders, roughly in line with their share of the population, and 6.8 percent of injuries in mass shootings, roughly half their share of the population.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2025. 10p.

By Kateira Aryaeinejad and Thomas Leo Scherer

Over the years, the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) funding for research has provided important opportunities to advance our understanding of topics related to crime and justice within the United States. Drawing from this portfolio, this synthesis paper compares and contrasts the data and findings from NIJ-sponsored research projects on violent extremism, mass shootings, and bias crimes. This comparison focuses both on the content of the data and on the creation and coverage of the data, examining findings from four research projects: ■ The Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) database of 2,226 individuals who demonstrated at least 1 of 5 extremist or radicalized behaviors. ■ The Bias Incidents and Actors Study (BIAS) database of 966 adults arrested or indicted for bias crimes. ■ The National Hate Crime Investigation Study (NHCIS) database of 1,230 hate crime cases. ■ The Violence Project dataset of 172 mass shootings. This synthesis first reviews the creation of each dataset and the types of information that are collected to better understand their generalizability and the ability to make comparisons across separate datasets. There are significant differences in the size, time span, and information of the four datasets, which limits the comparisons that can be made between the individuals described in each dataset and necessitates caution in drawing strong conclusions from such comparisons. With that caution in mind, the datasets suggest some similarities in the individuals who commit bias crimes and mass shootings and display violent extremist behavior. These individuals are primarily males in their 20s and 30s and unmarried at the time of their offenses. They may exhibit higher rates of unemployment than the general population and often have prior criminal histories. However, that is not to say that these characteristics should be used as a profile to determine who is at risk of or more likely to commit any of these types of offenses or behaviors. Rather, it calls into question what other factors may be impacting individuals with these characteristics who go on to commit these types of offenses. The datasets also suggest some differences in the individuals who commit each type of offense or behavior. Individuals associated with violent extremism tend to be more educated than those who commit mass shootings or bias crimes. Individuals who commit mass shootings exhibit higher rates of mental health issues than those who commit bias crimes or participate in violent extremism offenses. The comparison of individuals across categories also highlighted differences among individuals who committed the same type of offense. Among individuals who supported violent extremism, for example, those acting in support of far-right ideologies were more likely to have military experience than those following other ideologies. Comparing these datasets highlights their potential and their limitations, suggesting paths forward for future research. The different collection methods show the importance of precisely describing the data collection method, discussing which behaviors are missed by that method, and triangulating among data with different methods to understand what is missing. The differences in the types of information that each dataset collects about each individual and action suggest that future collections could have greater overlap and comparability. The establishment of potential similarities in demographics and life experiences also allows for more targeted data collection focusing on why most individuals who fit that profile do not commit an offense, while others do. In this way, these projects not only contribute to our current understanding of these types of offenses and behaviors but also allow future research and programming to be conducted more effectively.

Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 2024. 43p.

By Jacob D. Charles

Gun violence is a pressing national concern. And it has been for decades. Throughout nearly all that time, the primary tool lawmakers have deployed to stanch the violence has been the machinery of the criminal law. Increased policing, intrusive surveillance, vigorous prosecution, and punitive penalties are showered on gun offenders. This Article spotlights and specifies this approach—what it calls “firearms carceralism”—and details how a decades-long bipartisan consensus generated a set of state-centered solutions to gun violence that has not meaningfully impacted the problem. Instead, those policies have exacerbated racial inequity and compounded civic and community harms. The Article traces the escalating punitive measures imposed on gun offenders over the past half century. It first peers down into one microcosmic exemplar of firearms carceralism etched into federal mandatory minimum provisions and Supreme Court case law magnifying those penalties. It describes how criminal justice reforms have traditionally excluded those whose offenses are categorized as violent, and specifically and emphatically 2812 MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [108:2811 those who offend with guns by their side. It then draws out promising hints of a path to including gun offenders in efforts to reform or reimagine the criminal legal system. Most fundamentally, however, the Article wages a sustained critique of the system of firearms carceralism that fronts aggressive law enforcement and draconian terms of incarceration. It describes the unjustifiable breadth and depth of these practices and the harmful, racialized, and exclusionary values they simultaneously draw from and reinscribe. Finally, the Article argues in favor of three alternative paths to equitable peace and safety. First, it outlines private sector steps to, for example, dampen illicit firearms supply. Second, it highlights civil legal interventions like red flag laws and tort lawsuits against irresponsible gun sellers. Third, and most prominently, it underscores the promise of community violence intervention and restorative justice programs to bring meaningful safety apart from the carceral tools of coercive control.

MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [108:2811), 2024.

By Noémie Bouhana | Caitlin Clemmow | With contributions from Philip Doherty

Post 9/11, research on radicalisation and involvement in terrorism and violent extremism (henceforth, ITVE) has focussed on the role of individual-level attributes, such as the psychological characteristics, socio-economic background, demographic features, experiences, beliefs, past behaviours and criminality, and the social embeddedness of radicalised individuals and people involved in acts of terrorism (Borum, 2011; Stern, 2016; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2017; Sageman, 2008; Wiktorowicz, 2005). Likewise, existing processes, methods and tools to identify and evaluate the risk of ITVE operate largely at the individual level. The Vulnerability Assessment Framework (VAF) used in the context of Channel is the best example of this. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to identifying and evaluating the characteristics of the socio-physical contexts which may contribute to the emergence of the risk of ITVE, or, conversely, to its suppression. Yet research on crime, arguably a closely related problem space, makes a strong case that many of the causes and enabling conditions of criminal development (of which ITVE is an instantiation) are found in the environment: crime and criminals concentrate in space and time. Modifying the environment in which crime occurs and the specific settings in which criminals develop and act has been shown at length to be an effective approach to crime prevention and disruption (Weisburd et al., 2012). In crime prevention, as in other areas of behavioural change, one size does not fit all: to design effective programs, the ability to tailor interventions to the socio-physical context is paramount, which means that the effect of key contextual features on the outcome of interest must be understood (Sampson et al., 2013); notably, the effect of exposing (susceptible) individuals with particular kinds of characteristics to (criminogenic) places with particular kinds of features. Situational Action Theory [SAT] is a theory of crime causation, which, as its name suggests, puts context at the centre of the explanation of crime (P.- O. H. Wikström et al., 2009). In 2010, ahead of the revision of the Prevent Strategy, the UK Home Office commissioned a Rapid Evidence Assessment of the cause of al-Qaeda-influenced radicalisation seen through the lens of SAT (Bouhana & Wikström, 2011), which identified the key levels of analysis in a causal model of radicalisation as relating to individual vulnerability to radicalising influence, exposure to radicalising settings, and the mechanisms of emergence of said settings. In the decade since, this theoretical model has been refined and now underpins a research programme concerned chiefly with going beyond "who" and "why" to the "where" of terrorism involvement. It has inspired, notably, the EU FP7-funded international PRIME project on lone actor terrorism, which, among other findings, has shown that individual-level risk indicators are multifinal (i.e., their meaning determined by the context in which they arise), and has provided support for a formulation of individual vulnerability which encompasses susceptibility to exposure to radicalising settings, as well as cognitive susceptibility to moral change with significant implications for prevention efforts (Corner et al., 2018). It has also produced evidence for distinct configurations of individual/ context interaction patterns leading to the emergence of lone actor risk, with further implications for risk assessment (Clemmow et al., 2019). To better support policy strategy and counter-terrorism practice, the theoretical SAT model of radicalisation was reformulated and expanded into a risk analysis framework for lone actor terrorism [PRIME RAF] (Bouhana et al., 2016, 2018) and a systemic inference framework to inform counter-extremism strategies [S5], commissioned by the UK Counter-Extremism Commission (Bouhana, 2019). Both of these integrate SAT with the broader behavioural and socio-cognitive knowledge-base to refine our understanding of personenvironment interaction. While the RAF is concerned specifically with the effect of situational interaction on the motivation and capability of lone actors to act (behaviour), S5 is more broadly focused on explaining the acquisition of extremist propensities (beliefs). Both frameworks are analytically related and can be logically integrated. However, these remain general frameworks. Inherent in their interactionist logic is the fact that, while environmental processes of risk can be set out in generic terms, specific risk (or protective) factors and – crucially – their observable indicators must be elicited with regards to a particular context. This is because indicators are subject to change over space and time (P. O. H. Wikström & Bouhana, 2017) and because risk assessment is most effective when calibrated to context (Hamilton et al., 2021). A recently completed, Home Office-funded project guided by S5 (State of the Union [SOTU]; Bouhana and Schumann, 2021), which aimed to assess the observability of key analytical concepts of mainstream models of terrorism involvement, demonstrated the difficulty, yet also the necessity of translating said concepts into observable indicators, inasmuch as any model is intended to guide risk assessment or intervention design and evaluation. It also suggested that environmental indicators may be more reliably observed than susceptibility-related indicators using commonly available sources of information, and it tentatively provided further support for the notion that susceptibility and exposure interact in specific ways, leading to the emergence of risk. This project investigated the feasibility of developing a framework to assess the risk of involvement in terrorism and violent extremism at the level of place, with a view towards – further down the line – designing an assessment tool along the lines of the Vulnerability Assessment Framework, intended to assess environments instead of individuals. As a first step towards establishing this feasibility, this project investigated whether the mechanisms articulated in the S5 framework could be operationalised; in other words, to what extent they could be associated with a set of observable indicators relevant to the UK ITVE context. Given the relative scarcity of empirical research into the characteristics of extremist social ecologies and settings in the UK (and largely elsewhere) – which would be prerequisite to the conduct of a systematic review – the researchers elected to carry out an e-Delphi exercise with U.K. Prevent practitioners, the results of which are presented at length in this report.

London: CREST - Centre for Research and Evidence in Security Threats (CREST), 2025. 50p.

By Paul M. Reeping, Hannah S. Laqueur & Rose M. C. Kagawa

To date, there have been no peer-reviewed studies in the United States estimating the impact of gun-free zone policies in alcohol-serving establishments on rates of firearm violence in and around such establishments. In this study, we utilized a cross-sectional design to estimate the impact of Texas’s 51% alcohol law, which prohibits the carrying of firearms in establishments that generate over half of their revenue from alcohol sales. The analysis focused on the difference in shooting incidents in and around establishments with and without firearm carrying prohibitions in 2021 and 2022. After adjusting for establishment type (bar/restaurant), alcohol sales volume, census tract level demographic factors, and the number of nearby restaurants and bars, results indicated that gun-prohibiting bars experienced significantly fewer shootings compared to those that allowed guns. Specifically, establishments that were gun-prohibited had 37% fewer shootings within 50 m than those that were gun-allowing, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 60% fewer to 0.2% fewer. This association was more prominent in bars than in restaurants. The protective association with gun-prohibited status diminished with increased distance from the establishments; results were not significant at 100 m. Our study findings align with research suggesting that gun-free zones can reduce firearm violence. However, future studies using quasi-experimental designs that can better support causal inference are needed to support such a conclusion, as are studies exploring the efficacy of such policies in various settings and over longer periods.

Texas. J Urban Health, 2024, 9p.

By Dru Stevenson

Firearm policy in the United States is subject to longstanding political gridlock. Up to now, most of the legal academic literature has focused on the constitutionality of various—or any—regulations regarding firearm possession, sales, or usage. This article inverts the problem and proposes a system for voluntary registration and certification of nonowners, those who want to waive or renounce their Second Amendment rights as a matter of personal conviction. The proposed system is analogous to both the registration of conscientious objectors during wartime conscriptions, and the newer suicide prevention laws whereby individuals can add their names to a do-not-sell list for firearm dealers—though the proposal made here is broader and more permanent. Voluntary registration, with official certification, would serve three important purposes. First, this would help create social identification markers for the gunless-by-choice movement, something that historically has been missing; formal signals and labels of identification with a movement are necessary for a movement’s success, especially with prohibition or abstinence movements. Second, registration and certification as gunless would be a personal moral commitment marker; all societies provide ways for solemnizing one’s vows and solidifying one’s resolve on serious, lifelong moral decisions. Third, certification allows for a market signaling effect, providing useful information that can trigger a beneficial response from the private sector; market responses, in turn, provide useful information about otherwise hotly-debated beliefs, such as whether guns in fact enhance or reduce safety for individuals and public places. This article develops each of these points and offers a unique and simple regulatory and statutory alternative for a new system of registration and certification.

86 Brook. L. Rev. (2021).

By C4ADS

Executive Summary

Gun violence in Guatemala is fueled by the licit import of handguns. Once weapons have entered Guatemala, illicit actors have greater opportunity to divert these firearms from their intended use and users, instead wielding them to pursue crime and perpetrate violence.

This report uses seizure data and supply chain analysis to assess how the international flow of weapons into Guatemala is vulnerable to diversion, or the rerouting of licitly transferred conventional arms from their intended recipient or use.

This analysis reveals:

Handguns are the predominant weapon type used in violent crime in Guatemala. Many of the seized handguns are produced by major international weapons manufacturers such as Glock, Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI), Taurus, and Beretta.

Diversion pathways in-country appear among private citizens, commercial, andgovernment actors, presenting opportunities for illicit actors to acquire licit firearms.

Handguns, predominantly those made by top manufacturers, continue to flow into Guatemala.

These weapons are most often manufactured in the U.S., Brazil, and Turkey.

Manufacturers or entities within the manufacturer’s corporate network account for most handgun exports to Guatemala.

Handguns entering Guatemala primarily do so via air. They often transit through third countries and/or third parties, complicating due diligence and creating greater opportunity for diversion.

The U.S., Canada, and Germany are the most common transit countries for Guatemalan handgun imports.

U.S. gun stores are the most common non-manufacturer exporters of handguns to Guatemala.

The majority of Guatemalan importers are not end-users, but retailers that sell to both government and civilian consumers.

This report uses cases of weapons seizure and diversion to explore each of these findings. Using new data, we re-examine a case of Israeli arms that were sold in Guatemala in exchange for weapons later diverted to paramilitary forces in Colombia.

These findings illuminate areas where Guatemalan and international stakeholders can do more to counter the diversion of firearms in Guatemala. To this end, the report makes targeted recommendations for closing gaps in current legislation and enforcement.

Washington, DC: C4ADS2025. 24p.