Theories Of Terrorism

Did you know that approximately 170 cyber-attacks occur every hour (CBS, 2015)?
Along with the increasing rise of technological advances, commodities, reforms these frontiers have also serve to facilitate the rise of new contemporary issues that elude criminologist and pre-existing theories. Theories which originated from a “great crowd of very diverse people meeting up and passing through, sometimes establishing fruitful exchange, sometimes merely rubbing shoulders in the crowded passage of textbooks and conferences” (Freilich & Lafree, 2014). To honor those encounters in this essay I’ll be describing how the contemporary issues of terrorism and cybercrime are impacting standing theories.
Terrorism is a recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the United States after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Baffled by the attacks the government rushed to implement the US Patriot Act which escalated the fear of terrorism and basically placed infringements on constitutional rights on the basis of national security. On a normal day we would turn to standing theories to explain the causes of crime since these theories serve to ask and
answer questions while making connections between unseeingly unconnected phenomena. However, with terrorism this was not done until the government had taken drastic measures and even then criminologist only used certain perspectives and ignored the rest. According to the text only four views (psychological, economic, ideological, and socialization) stood out. One of them being the ideological view which claims that ideological beliefs prompt behavior. While this view does serve to explain what motivates some terrorist other perspectives can serve to supplement the motive for others whom the ideological view does not hold true. For example, if criminologist were to explain terrorism through the context of the Rational Choice Theory then they would realize that the self-destructive behavior of terrorist is not much different than that of regular criminals who are more motivated by the anticipation of self-gratifying benefits than altruistic motivation. Besides missing out on the possible connections made by other perspectives, criminologist are focusing all their attention on one theory at a time and in doing so they are derailing the core of the theory to encompass new findings instead of explaining those details with another collaborative view. For example, when explaining terrorism through the lens of the economic view it is believed that the “lack of economic opportunity and recessionary economies” (Siegel, p.312) correlate with terrorism but it also states that these economic conditions could lead to “more able and better educated individuals to participate”. So instead of focusing on how economic disadvantages produces willing bodies it shifts the focus to the quality of the bodies rather than the quantity which is what the Economic view would emphasis. The quality aspect of terrorist would best be described with the Socialization view which states that “terrorist operatives are not poor or lacking in education” but are rather members of the upper class whose involvement in terrorism stems from the contact with socialization agents who provide them with an alternate viewpoint and value system that differs from that provided by primary and secondary socialization agents. Besides terrorism another contemporary issue that often overlaps and impacts standing theories is cybercrime.
A cybercrime defines any crime committed with the usage of a computer and or the internet. According to the text “the internet has opened up a broad new venue for illegal activity; [and] cybercrime has become a feature of the new millennium” (Siegel, p.390). The interesting thing about cybercrime and standing theories is that the prevention strategies proposed by conventional theories are useless. Typically, crime prevention strategies are crafted from a thorough understanding of standing theories. For example, the text describes six preventive strategies outlined by the Rational Choice Theory which include: increasing the effort needed to commit crime, increasing the risk of committing crime, reducing the rewards of the crime, inducing cult and increasing shame, reducing provocation, and removing excuses (Siegel, pg.93-94). These crime prevention strategies would work for traditional crimes but not for cybercrime because cybercrime is “rapidly evolving with new schemes being created daily, [and] it is difficult to detect through traditional law enforcement channels” and often times required that law agents match the skills and pace of the perpetuators (Siegel, pg.390-391) and that can be difficult when an agency is on a budget and clearing cybercrimes is time consuming and costly. Anyway if law enforcement agents were to apply the preventive strategy of increasing the risk of committing the crime it wouldn’t make much of a difference since the monetary benefits and the easy of committing the crime would outweigh the cost of committing the crime. According to security advisor Roger A. Grimes from 2003 to 2006, the FBI arrested between 1,200 to 1,00 identity thieves and from those cases only a third of them resulted in convictions. these type of security breach affected “8.3 million victims, nearly 4 percent of the entire U.S. adult population yet only one identity thief was convicted for every 20,750 victims” (Grimes, 2012). With that amount of apprehension rates increasing the penalty for committing the crimes makes no difference when making the conscious choice of committing a cybercrime.
In conclusion the fast pace of advancement in technology has facilitated and created new contemporary issues that elude criminologist and disrupt standing theories.
Terrorism a fairly recent phenomena expedited government and criminologist responses to the point that criminologist neglected to analyze completely the issue using the various standing theories and focused on the main obvious ones instead and in doing so they missing out on important observations. Besides terrorism, cybercrimes are also a new phenomenon. Cybercrimes have been affecting standing theories by nullifying the preventive strategies that have been crafted from a thorough understanding of the inner workings of each theory. All in it might be necessary to reevaluate and update standing theories or find different ways of approaching these new contemporary
issues.