Failed and Foiled Islamic Terrorist Plots Targeting Military Personnel in the United States Since 9/11

Background: On May 21, 2020, Navy police officers interrupted a terrorismrelated incident by neutralizing a 20-year old gunman who opened fire on military personnel at an entrance gate outside of the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas. One sailor was injured before the gunman was killed by Naval police officers

Using Open-Source Data to Study Bias Homicide Against Homeless Persons

Despite their high-profile nature, there has been a lack of scholarly research on bias-motivated homicide in the United States. One explanation for this dearth of prior research is the lack of official data available on this type of crime. In response, the current study proposes an alternative method for studying one form of bias crime, homicides targeting homeless persons, using open-source data (e.g., court documents, news media reports, advocacy group chronologies, etc.). To demonstrate their utility, open-source data are employed to empirically examine anti-homeless homicide incident, suspect, and victim characteristics. Findings reveal that anti-homeless homicide tends to be committed in public parks with blunt objects by groups of young males against older, solitary male victims. Implications for policy are briefly discussed

Less than Half of Racially-Motivated Homicides Result in Official Hate Crime Charges

Background: On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was gunned down while jogging near his Georgia home. Portions of the physical altercation were caught on camera by one of the three men charged in the murder. The shooter reportedly uttered a racial epithet at Arbery as he lay in the street dying. Georgia is one of the four states without hate crime laws in the United states, but the FBI is currently investigating the shooting as a potential hate crime

Characteristics of Bias Homicides Against the LGBTQIA+ Community

Background: Five people were killed and at least 17 injured on November 19, 2022 just before midnight at Club Q, an LGBTQIA+ club in Colorado Springs, CO. The shooting ended after a 22-year-old gunman wielding an AR-15 style rifle was disarmed by club patrons. Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials continue to investigate the mass shooting. The alleged shooter has been charged with murder and hate crimes

Victims of Anti-Asian Bias Homicides in the United States, 1990-2019

Background: Asians have increasingly becometargets of bias crime since China was publicly linkedto the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Acts of violencetargeting persons because of their Asian descent arenot new and have included brutal attacks resulting inthe death and elevated levels of fear across Asiancommunities

Gender and Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism in the United States

This brief summarizes findings from a recent study published in Crime & Delinquency titled Gender and Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism in the United States (available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287211047535 ). Using data from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), this study examine show gender varies across federal terrorism cases, how gender shapes federal terrorism case outcomes, and how combinations of relevant case attributes uniquely impact court outcomes for males and females. Data include a sample of 2,147 defendants in terrorism-related cases across several types of legal measures: charge type, number of charges, whether or not the prosecutor references terrorism (e.g., relying on terrorism statutes or referring to a defendant\u27s association with a terrorist movement during adjudication), joint or single prosecution, bail, conviction outcome, and sentence length. While several types of analyses were conducted, only descriptive statistics are presented in this brief

Lest we forget: a historical analysis of police line of duty deaths in Indianapolis

Previous studies on police line of duty deaths are limited by their heavy reliance on traditional data. While the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data have undoubtedly advanced what we know about violence against police, placing line of duty deaths in their social and historical context poses challenges. Further, only a select number of variables are available for event-level analyses from traditional data sources. In this study, we utilise data culled from several open-source materials to present a comprehensive analysis of police line of duty deaths in Indianapolis, Indiana from 1880 to 2014. Descriptive findings for several incident, victim, and offender-level variables are presented, while placing fatal attacks on police within their sociohistorical and situational contexts. Two themes emerging from open-source data are also used to make sense of our descriptive findings. The first theme captures shifting circumstances from public to private line of duty deaths, while the second theme suggests how advancing technologies have been used to benefit police work while also introducing new risks to officer safety

Restorativeness, Procedural Justice, and Defiance as Long-term Predictors of Re-Offending of Participants in Family Group Conferences

This study extends Hipple and colleagues’ variation analysis by examining how varying degrees of restorative justice, procedural justice, and defiance in family group conference (FGC) processes and outcomes affect long-term juvenile recidivism measures in one large Midwestern U.S. city. The current study uses two data sets from the Indianapolis Juvenile Restorative Justice Experiment that include conference observations, juvenile histories, and adult criminal histories to examine how variations in FGC elements shape juvenile recidivism outcomes in a long-term follow-up period. Findings reveal that the greater fidelity of FGCs to the theoretical foundations of restorativeness and procedural justice, the better outcomes in the long term as measured by future offending. Specifically, offense type and conference restorativeness influenced the probability of recidivism in the long term. Results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice theories, providing further support that FGCs are a viable youth justice program option

American jihadi terrorism: A comparison of homicides and unsuccessful plots

While the number of American jihadi terrorist attacks remains relatively rare, terrorist plots thwarted by law enforcement have increased since September 11, 2001. Although these law enforcement blocks of would-be terrorists are considered counterterrorism triumphs by the FBI, human rights and civil liberty watch groups have conversely suggested that those who plan for attacks alongside government informants and undercover agents may be unique and essentially dissimilar from terrorists. Underlying this debate is the empirical question of how planned yet unsuccessful attacks and their plotters compare to successful terrorist homicides and their perpetrators. The current study addresses this question by comparatively examining jihadi terrorist homicides and unsuccessful plots occurring in part or wholly on U.S. soil between 1990 and 2014. Data for this study come from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), an open-source database with information on terrorism and extremist crimes. Based on these data, descriptive statistics are provided for several incident, offender, and target variables across three jihadi terrorist violence categories, including homicides, plots with specified targets, and plots with non-specific targets. We find several important differences across categories of terrorist violence, suggesting that unsuccessful plotters and their intended crimes vary from their more successful terrorist counterparts