Seditious Conspiracy Charges in the American Terrorism Study (ATS)

In January 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Seditious Conspiracy charges against members of the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers in connection to the January 6th (2021) siege of the U.S. Capitol Building. Several have entered not guilty pleas and a trial is expected in July 2022. To provide context, this brief offers an overview of 11 Seditious Conspiracy cases included in the American Terrorism Study (ATS) since 1980. In total, these cases involve nine groups (a.k.a. cells or plots ) and 78 defendants charged with Seditious Conspiracy (18 USC§ 2384), a relatively rare charge that comprises less than one half percent of the over 18,000 counts accounted for in the ATS database and differs from the more common charge of conspiracy (18 USC § 371)

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

Spatial Analysis of U.S. Terrorism Incidents

This research brief represents an overview of basic spatial patterns across a sample of terrorism incidents in the United States. While research concerning characteristics of incidents has received some study, the geospatial patterns of these incidents remains largely unexamined. Logically, different ideological categories of terrorism may lend themselves to different spatial patterns and preferences for target distance. In addition, the distance required to perpetrate an incident may affect the success rate of an attack. Terrorists who must travel further to engage in preparatory activity such as surveillance or transporting weapons may stand an increased chance of failure due to human intervention. Previous research from the American Terrorism Study (ATS) has examined these ideas and generally suggests terrorists favor targets closer to their place of residence; this research brief builds upon that previous work. The findings suggest that in recent years, terrorists have lived closer to the intended target. This is primarily related to the increase in ISIS-affiliated incidents

30 years of Deadly Hate and Bias Crimes

The Bias Homicide Database (BHDB) is an open-source, relational database housed in the Terrorism Research Center (TRC), which is located in the J.W. Fulbright college of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Created in 2003, the TRC harnesses science and data analytics to promote safer communities, inform evidence-based policies, and train the next generation of law enforcement and intelligence professionals. The TRC also hosts the Crime and Security Data Analytics Lab. This brief was prepared by Terrorism Research Center (TRC) staff. The TRC is a non-profit, nonpartisan research organization

The Longevity of American Terrorists: Factors Affecting Sustainability

This project was an outgrowth of two previous NIJ projects being conducted under NIJ’s Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism program area. The first of these projects, which ended in 2015, focused upon testing one of the most prominent theoretical models of extremist radicalization -- identity and framing theory. One of the findings from examination of this theoretical model is consistent with the notion that “people want to be associated with a winner.” Recruitment and commitment, crucial to the lifespan of any terrorist movement, improve when the movement has been able to commit successful terrorist incidents (Freilich, Chermak, and Caspi, 2009), particularly if the offenders escaped unscathed. In the second project, which focused upon the temporal sequencing of terrorists’ precursor behaviors,2 a somewhat serendipitous finding emerged to crystalize the current issue. A preliminary analysis of the differences between “lone actors” and members of “cells or groups” revealed that lone actors “survived” substantially longer than members of cells or groups before being arrested or indicted. Although we later found this relationship to be spurious, it was worthy of further examination

Temporal Sequencing, Incident Sophistication, and Terrorist Outcomes

There have been few efforts to examine how the planning process affects the outcome of a terrorist plot. This research brief provides some preliminary findings from an examination of the impact of the length of the planning process, the impact of multiple participants, and the volume of precursor activity on the success or failure of terrorist plots in the United States. While conventional wisdom holds true that a shorter planning process and fewer preparatory activities reduces perpetrators chances of getting caught therefore increases success rate, the new findings show that the more people involved in the planning process also increases the probability of success

Sequencing Terrorists\u27 Precursor Behaviors: A Crime Specific Analysis

Recently completed research (Smith et al., 2016) suggests that radicalization toward violence is best viewed as a process – a journey that begins with a less-radical identity and moves toward a more radical identity and corresponding orientation. Efforts to test this theoretical assertion revealed that the process of identity construction involves a variety of behaviors that David Snow has referred to as “identify work” (Snow and Machalek, 1983; Snow and McAdam, 2000; Snow, 2004; Cross and Snow, 2011). One type of identity work –demonstration events – appeared to be particularly relevant to our ability to predict radicalization toward violence and subsequent terrorism. The commission of acts in preparation for a terrorism incident serves to “demonstrate” the individual participant’s commitment to the cause as well as solidifying their radicalization to violence. The number and type of these demonstration events were significantly related to the terrorists’ rank or status in the cell or group, the severity of preparatory crimes they committed, and the number of terrorism incidents in which the individual was involved (Smith et al., 2016)