Strategies for Preventing Terrorism

129 Pages·2013·0.57 MB·English

by  Tore Bjorgo

Strategies for Preventing Terrorism
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
Also by Tore Bjørgo
POLITISK KOMMUNIKASJON: INTRODUKSJON TIL SEMIOTIKK
OG RETORIKK (with Daniel Heradstveit; Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and
Bulgarian editions)
POLITISK TERRORISME (with Daniel Heradstvei; in Norwegian)
RACIST VIOLENCE IN EUROPE (co-edited, with Rob Witte; English and
Norwegian editions)
TERROR FROM THE EXTREME RIGHT (editor)
RACIST AND RIGHT-WING VIOLENCE IN SCANDINAVIA: Patterns,
Perpetrators, and Responses
NATION AND RACE: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture
(co-editor, with Jeffrey Kaplan)
VOLD, RASISME OG UNGDOMSGJENGER: Forebygging og
bekjempelse (with Yngve Carlsson; in Norwegian)
GENERALISERT HAT – POLARISERTE FELLESSKAP: Om konflikter
mellom ungdomsmiljøer i en norsk by (with Y. Carlsson & T. Haaland;
in Norwegian)
ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM (editor)
LEAVING TERRORISM BEHIND: Individual and Collective
Disengagement (co-editor, with John Horgan)
POLICE SCIENCE PERSPECTIVES: Towards a European Approach
(with five co-authors)
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
Strategies for Preventing
Terrorism
Tore Bjørgo
Professor of Police Science, Norwegian Police
University College
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
Tore Bjørgo © 2013
Foreword © Alex P. Schmid 2013
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
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doi: 10.1057/9781137355089
Contents
Foreword by Alex P. Schmid vii
Preface ix
Part I A Theory for Practice
1 Introduction 2
Definitions of concepts and analytical
approaches 4
Theoretical considerations on preventive
mechanisms 6
Models of crime prevention 9
Nine generic mechanisms for
preventing crime 12
From model to strategy 24
Part II The Preventive Mechanisms Applied
2 Norm Setting against Violence and
Terrorism 31
3 Reducing the Emergence of Terrorism and
Violent Radicalisation 38
4 Deterring Involvement in Terrorism 49
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
vi Contents
5 Disrupting Planned Terrorist Attacks 55
6 Protecting Vulnerable Targets 64
7 Reducing the Harmful Consequences of
Terrorist Attacks 71
8 Reducing the Rewards from Acts of Terrorism 76
9 Incapacitation – Eliminating the Capacity
of (Potential) Terrorists to Cause Harm 81
10 Disengagement from Terrorism 86
11 Some Conclusions 95
Bibliography 99
Index 110
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
Foreword
An enormous amount of money has been spent in the last
12 years by governments on reacting to terrorism. However,
this is not adequately reflected in the commensurate
amount of analyses evaluating how wisely hundreds of
billions of dollars have been spent on dealing with terror-
ism. Many of the government efforts have often focused
on military operations, including pre-emption and tar-
geted killings or the disruption of terrorist activities by
intelligence-led operations. Sometimes this has been done
under the label of prevention even though there are indi-
cations that some of these very same actions have fanned
rather than prevented terrorist activities.
Prevention is a concept and policy that is used in
many fields, e.g. health care and epidemiology. There its
exploration and practice is more developed than when it
comes to the control of violence in general or terrorism
in particular. This is, for instance, reflected in the fact
that some epidemiological researchers make a distinction
between various levels of prevention, e.g. primary, second-
ary and tertiary prevention. Others even add more levels,
including ‘primordial prevention’ (actions inhibiting the
emergence of risk factors) and, at the other far end, even
‘quaternary prevention’ actions (meant to deal with the
negative consequences of excessive counter-measures).
While there are many good books on crime preven-
tion as well as conflict prevention, there is, strangely
enough, no really good volume on the prevention of ter-
rorism. There have been some laudable attempts in this
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089 vii
viii Foreword
direction, including a volume by Ronald Clark and Graeme Newman on
Outsmarting the Terrorists (2006) in which they tried to take principles
from situational crime prevention and apply them to the prevention of
terrorism. Key to this approach is to reduce opportunities and rewards
for terrorist crimes.
Building on their work but going well beyond it, we now have this
new study by Tore Bjørgo, Professor at the Norwegian Police University
College in Oslo. Strategies for Preventing Terrorism introduces a new
generic and systematic model of terrorism prevention. It has been said
that nothing is as practical as a good theory and while this is not always
true, it certainly applies to this short but powerful study. Already in his
past work on Root Causes of Terrorism (2005) and Leaving Terrorism Behind
(2009) Prof. Bjørgo has shown himself to be an original thinker and this
is again confirmed in this monograph which breaks new ground. The
beauty of this study lies in its logic and simplicity. With great clarity, he
introduces nine preventive mechanisms, outlines the measures that need
to be taken to implement them, explains who has to take them against
whom and what the pros and cons of each of the proposed measures
are. The book is an eye-opener – once you have read it you wonder how
we could fail to see the problem of prevention of terrorism in any other
terms. It should be on the desk of every counter-terrorism professional.
Alex P. Schmid
Director, Terrorism Research Initiative
Editor, Perspectives on Terrorism
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089
Preface
The purpose of this study is to put society’s fight against
terrorism into a comprehensive crime prevention perspec-
tive with a clear, understandable theoretical foundation.
The analysis results in a general model for the prevention
of crime, which in principle is applicable to almost all
types of crime. Traditionally, both the police and other
social actors have tended to think of the prevention of
crime/terrorism and responses to crime/terrorism as two
separate tracks or activities. The model presented in this
book goes beyond this division by also looking at sanctions
and harm reduction within a comprehensive prevention
perspective. Thus, this study considers terrorism a serious
form of crime and discusses counter-terrorism within the
framework of crime prevention.
When I started to work on this model1 back in 2006, it
was prompted by a frustration with the fact that official
action plans and counter-terrorism strategies in my home
country Norway and elsewhere largely appeared to be sum-
maries of measures which had already been introduced or
established. There was, and still is, a general lack of stra-
tegic analyses of what one can and ought to do to reduce
the problem of terrorism based on a clear and analytical
understanding of how different measures can have such an
effect.
The British CONTEST (COuNter-TErrorism STrategy)
represents a step forward in this respect. Although not
DOI: 10.1057/9781137355089 ix