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An economy of choice? Terrorist decision-making and criminological rational choice theories reconsidered

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Abstract

This article first identifies the increasing centrality of practical and theoretical crime prevention approaches in tackling terrorism. Central features include the increased use of practical target hardening and rational choice models of trangressive action. Utilising cross-disciplinary research from criminology and terrorism studies, the efficacy of such strategies and their translation into counter-terrorism roles is assessed. It argues that such emphasis on opportunity structures and deterrence models is limited in its account of terrorist decision-making. This is because of many factors including the strong interplay between ideology, motivation and operational choice; the role of extraneous mitigating influences; and the need for theoretical approaches to accommodate evolving threats.

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Notes

  1. Indeed, a number of accounts stress how timely and usable intelligence is one of the most potent methods of countering terrorism (see Gill and Phythian, 2006 for an overview).

  2. although constraints are also clearly exerted within these forms of terrorism. Among other examples, this is evinced in the now famous disagreement between Ayman Zawahiri and Abu Musab Zarqawi over the latter's targeting of Iraqi Shia.

  3. Since the 1940s there has been considerable debate within criminology regarding the amount of planning and premeditation involved in criminal offences. Where consensus exists is in the agreement that levels of planning vary over different types of crime. Sexual offences, for instance, are largely associated with relatively autonomous and ‘compressed’ (short) decision-making processes (see Ward and Hudson, 2000). By contrast, research data from interviews with over 2000 convicted bank robbers show that planning is a more central consideration in that activity (see Kube, 1988). However, much of this planning is oriented around escape routes and normally incorporates inaccurate overestimations of the yields of the offence. As such, it is reasonable to conclude that while planning process of criminal offences are important, this is a more consistent, developed and extensive feature of terrorist activity.

  4. Verstehen refers to a qualitative methodological approach that advocates experiencing the social world from the participant's perspective to understand how they mediate and make sense of their own environment and circumstances. This allows participants to use their own concepts and terminology to frame their experience and thus reduce the reactivity and influence of a researchers’ presence on the findings.

  5. Here, it is possible that more detailed lessons from environmental psychology could be utilised, including research on the emotional states that the built environment may generate (see, for example, Kopec, 2006).

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  1. School of Law, University of East London, Duncan House Campus, Stratford High Street,, London, E15 2JB, UK

    Pete Fussey

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Fussey, P. An economy of choice? Terrorist decision-making and criminological rational choice theories reconsidered. Secur J 24, 85–99 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2009.11

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