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Terrorist Decision-Making, Ideology, and Counterterrorism

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Handbook on Crime and Deviance

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Abstract

Terrorism is a unique form of violent crime because it takes place in a political, economic, and social context larger than the act of violence itself. The study of terrorism in criminology and criminal justice has flourished since 2001 due to renewed academic interest and national security necessity to study the phenomenon, as well as increased availability in data resources. This chapter will address the definition of terrorism, the data sources available to study terrorism, the characteristics of those who participate in terrorist activity, terrorist behavior and how the organization’s ideology influences the types of terrorist attacks it carries out, and government responses with a particular focus on deterrence-based policies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a complete introduction and review of the Global Terrorism Database, see LaFree and Dugan (2007) and Dugan (2012).

  2. 2.

    See http://www.start.umd.edu/data-and-tools/start-datasets for a complete list of the datasets provided by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

  3. 3.

    Includes leftist, communist/socialist, anarchist, and anti-globalization terrorist groups.

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Bellandi, R. (2019). Terrorist Decision-Making, Ideology, and Counterterrorism. In: Krohn, M., Hendrix, N., Penly Hall, G., Lizotte, A. (eds) Handbook on Crime and Deviance. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20779-3_31

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