TerrorismHow Do Terrorists Make Decisions?
A new guide, released by CREST, focuses on the insights criminology can provide into terrorist decision-making. It looks at what terrorists do and how they do it. The guide addresses the following questions: How do men and women decide to commit an act of terrorism? Do they plan wisely? How do they choose their targets? How do they evaluate the risk of a single operation? How is decision-making affected by the emotions felt during planning and operational phases? Can law enforcement be usefully informed by what we know about the behaviors of those who commit other kinds of crimes?
A new guide, released by CREST, focuses on the insights criminology can provide into terrorist decision-making. It looks at what terrorists do and how they do it. The guide addresses the following questions: How do men and women decide to commit an act of terrorism? Do they plan wisely? How do they choose their targets? How do they evaluate the risk of a single operation? How is decision-making affected by the emotions felt during planning and operational phases? Can law enforcement be usefully informed by what we know about the behaviors of those who commit other kinds of crimes?
Planning
Terrorist actions are rational. Deliberate choices are made regarding target, weapons, clustering attacks, and potential victims. The level of planning may depend on the complexity of the attack, the appearance of sudden, unanticipated opportunity, or perceptions of law enforcement. Sometimes planning is extensive.
“The priority should be to develop and plan … [and collect] the information which unit commanders would need to mount successful operations against enemy personnel or to sabotage enemy installations … I issued instructions to Intelligence Officers (IO) that they should study the daily and local newspapers carefully, and indeed read every serious magazine and periodical they could lay their hands on …” (Member of the Provisional IRA).
Sometimes attacks are spontaneous and ‘planning’ develops only in the course of daily activities.
A Weathermen Underground attack on a United Fruit warehouse was planned on the same day it took place because one of the group passed “it lots of times”. Over the course of the previous couple of days, he had “been checking it out” in more detail for the purpose of an attack, observing it “deserted after six o’clock at night”.
A member of the Provisional IRA recalled an open-back British Army jeep driving unaccompanied into their stronghold.
“At this time the British Army would never come in unless heavily armed and in armoured cars. This particular day we weren’t expecting anything like this … Here was something that just came out of the blue … We were so confident and in such control of the area at that time that instinct took over: ‘There’s a target’ and ‘Hit it.’”
Similar variance is found for other kinds of crimes. Sometimes planning is extensive, especially for more complicated crimes (e.g. bank robberies are planned more often than muggings). Other times crimes are more spontaneous and the same criminal may sometimes plan and sometimes not.
