A recent terrorism background report brings answers to critical questions about terrorism. Terrorism has a long history, but the last 15 to 20 years, especially after the attacks at the Twin Towers in New York, have seen a lot of global worry about it. That has led to a lot of questions about what terrorism actually is, and how it can prevented. But it has also led to all sorts of questions about the nature of terrorism and about the people who are involved in it: Who are they? What are their backgrounds? And why do they get involved in terrorism? A terrorism report from The Netherlands sheds light on these questions.
Table of Contents
Terrorism Background: The Suspects
To learn more about who terrorism suspects are, the researchers of this terrorism research paper looked at things like how old the suspects were, where they were from, and whether they had a criminal record before they became involved in terrorism. They used a database on all 279 terrorism suspects in The Netherlands.
Surprisingly, the findings show that people who are suspected of terrorism are a lot like people who are suspected of other crimes. Here are some of the findings:
- Terrorism suspects are often males: around 88% are;
- They’re on average 30 years old;
- A lot of them (about one third) still live at home;
- They’re not very well educated;
- They’re relatively often unemployed;
- Most of the suspects have a migrant background.
Terrorism Background: What are Triggers to get involved in it?
The researchers also looked at what factors could have triggered suspects’ involvement in terrorism. Interestingly, they found that more than 10% of the suspects lost their job in the year prior to becoming a suspect of terrorism. In other words, losing one’s job may be a trigger for involvement in terrorism.
On the other hand, things like being or getting divorced or married and becoming a parent do not seem to affect whether or not someone becomes a suspect for terrorism.
Overall, most of these characteristics do not just apply to suspects of terrorism, but also to suspects of other crimes. In fact, many suspects of terrorism also turn out to have committed other crimes. About two thirds already had a criminal record before they became a suspect of terrorism. Most of these prior criminal records were for common crime types like assault, threats, or shoplifting.
The Crime-Terror Nexus
The finding that common crime and terrorism are linked is also known as the crime-terror nexus. It is not entirely clear why this link exists. It could be that suspects have certain personality characteristics, such as a tendency toward thrill-seeking and risky behavior, that leads them to commit both terrorism and other crimes. Regular crime could also be a starting point for later radicalization and terrorism. What’s interesting is that it looks like at least part of the suspects had stopped committing regular crimes and by way of coming clean converted to jihadism.
The Profile of Terrorism Suspects has changed
Relatively recent trends in international terrorism show the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—also known as the Islamic State, IS, or ISIL—which is a jihadist terrorist organization. Interestingly, since the rise of ISIS, the profile of terrorist suspects has also changed. These suspects seem to be part of a fairly loosely organized, homegrown group of radicals, and they have become younger, are more often unemployed, and much more often have a criminal record before they become suspects of terrorism. This seems to imply that both criminal and terrorist organizations are nowadays recruiting their new members from the same groups of people, namely young male delinquents who are looking for redemption or for a way to justify committing crime.
Summing up, the findings from this study show that many terrorist suspects are similar to suspects of other types of crime, that suspects of terrorism often have a criminal record, and that the profile of suspects of terrorism has changed recently with the rise of ISIS.
Terrorism Background resource:
(in Dutch:) Thijs, F., Rodermond, E. & Weerman, F. (2018). Verdachten van terrorisme in beeld; Achtergrondkenmerken, ‘triggers’ en eerdere politiecontacten. Politie & Wetenschap, Apeldoorn.
