Overview
The situational approach to terrorism evolved from situational crime prevention, a well-established evidence-based approach to preventing and reducing crime. It argues that terrorists make choices that are limited by their perception of the opportunities afforded to them to carry out their mission. The situational approach explains how terrorists carry out their missions in contrast to whythey do so. There are four pillars of terrorist opportunity: targets, weapons, availability of tools for doing attacks, and local conditions that facilitate terrorist operations. By manipulating these opportunities, interventions are directed at increasing the effort of mounting an attack, increasing the risk of carrying out an attack, reducing the rewards of attacks, reducing provocations to terrorists, and removing excuses terrorists use to justify their attacks. Because the situational approach focuses primarily on prevention, it places great emphasis on planning, which makes it a...
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Newman, G.R. (2014). Situational Approaches to Terrorism. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_95
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_95
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