Noemie Bouhana

• PhD
• Professor at University College London

Polarisation, social media, multiculturalism, economic strain, loss of political trust. The list of suspected drivers of extremism grows every day. How do we tell which of them really contribute to the risk of extremism? Why do some individuals seem more vulnerable to this risk than others? This paper answers these fundamental questions.

The threat posed by lone actors ranks high on the list of terrorism-related security concerns. In recent years especially, discussions about these perpetrators have focused primarily on those associated with, or inspired by, Islamic State and other jihadist entities. However, a significant portion of lone actors actually hail from right-wing extrem...

To move beyond current aggregate and static conclusions regarding radicalisation and subsequent terrorist behaviour, empirical research should look to criminological models which are influenced by the life course perspective. Current UK government policy designed to prevent radicalisation and terrorist engagement look to outputs from criminological...

This research note argues that the ‘lone wolf’ typology should be fundamentally reconsidered. Based on a three-year empirical research project, two key points are made to support this argument. First, the authors found that ties to online and offline radical milieus are critical to lone actors’ adoption and maintenance of both the motive and capabi...

Although the years since 9/11 have seen an significant increase in the contribution of criminologists to the study of terrorist events, efforts to apply major criminological theories to the understanding of the development of terrorist criminality and individual involvement in terrorist action have lagged. In this chapter, we apply a recently formu...

This study examines how behavioral indicators co-occur as “risk profiles” across different domains relevant to risk assessment as theorized by a Risk Analysis Framework, and how these profiles impact upon vulnerability to radicalization. We unpack both the inter- and intra-domain relationships among profiles, identifying the relative importance of...

In the rush to explain lone-actor terrorist radicalization and behavior, analyses highlighted a diversity of risk factors. This chapter organizes this knowledge into a general framework, the risk analysis framework (RAF). The framework incorporates theories that advance explanations about the role these factors play in producing the outcome of inte...

Full text available from https://crestresearch.ac.uk/resources/are-conceptual-frameworks-of-radicalisation-leading-to-involvement-in-terrorism-observable/ This document reports the findings of a research project commissioned by the UK Home Office to investigate select aspects of the better-known conceptual frameworks of radicalisation leading to i...

A public health approach to countering the threat from extremism aims to manage vulnerability before behaviour escalates to require involvement from the criminal justice system. Fundamental to applying a public health approach is understanding how risk (and protective) factors can be modified, in other words, the functional roles of these factors....

This article adds to the growth in data‐driven analyses seeking to compare samples of violent extremists with other violent populations of interest. While lone‐actor terrorists and public mass murderers are frequently treated as distinct offender types, both engage (or attempt to engage) in largely public and highly publicized acts of violence and...

This chapter updates builds upon previous descriptive analyses of lone-actor terrorists, their behaviours, ideological backgrounds and degrees of ‘loneness’. It offers greater conceptual clarity, updated data and a more expansive set of variables from previous analyses. Individual vulnerability indicators examined here include potential indicators...

Crime is a complex phenomenon. To understand the commission of crime researchers must map both the temporal and the spatial processes involved. The current research combines a temporal method of analysis, Behaviour Sequence Analysis, with geospatial mapping, to outline a new method of integrating temporal and spatial movements of criminals. To show...

This study examines individual differences in violent extremist intentions. It combines key criminological theories and concepts including situational action theory, social learning theory, self-control, general strain theory and legal cynicism. We employ a conceptually integrated approach to studying extremism, which acknowledges the profound effe...

This paper presents a simulation model describing the radicalisation process. The radicalisation process is a complex human socio-environmental process which has been of much academic interest for the past two decades. Despite this it is still poorly understood and is an extremely difficult area for social scientists to research. It is a subject wh...

Research suggests that lone-actor terrorists and mass murderers may be better conceptualized as lone-actor grievance-fueled violence (LAGFV) offenders, rather than as distinct types. The present study sought to examine the extent to which these offenders could (or could not) be disaggregated along dimensions relevant to the threat assessment of bot...

Research Summary The lone‐actor terrorist population can be extremely heterogeneous and difficult to detect. Intelligence is vital to countering this threat. We devise a typology of person–exposure patterns (PEPs) that could serve as a framework for intelligence gathering and threat assessment. We use cluster analysis and a risk analysis framework...

Ongoing targeting of mass transit networks and the challenges associated with policing these large open systems means that encouraging public vigilance and reporting on railways is a counter-terrorism priority. There is, however, surprisingly little research on motivations and barriers to cooperating with the police in this context. This paper cont...

Although there has recently been a considerable increase in research into lone actor terrorism, one of the main areas that remains understudied is that of target selection. The lack of empirically driven studies that can guide prevention measures is a notable oversight. This paper applies methods from environmental criminology to examine the reside...

Terrorists from a wide array of ideological influences and organisational structures consider security and risk on a continuous and rational basis. The rationality of terrorism has been long noted of course but studies tended to focus upon organizational reasoning behind the strategic turn toward violence. A more recent shift within the literature...

This article provides an in-depth assessment of lone actor terrorists’ attack planning and preparation. A codebook of 198 variables related to different aspects of pre-attack behavior is applied to a sample of 55 lone actor terrorists. Data were drawn from open-source materials and complemented where possible with primary sources. Most lone actors...

The Channel programme is part of the Prevent Strategy, one of the four strands of the UK counter-terrorism strategy known as CONTEST. While the programme has been running since 2007 and thousands of purportedly ‘vulnerable’ individuals are referred to the programme each year, there are still gaps in public knowledge about the programme, and this ar...

Led by UCL, the purpose of this deliverable is to set out an analytical framework, which will 1) guide and motivate the project's data collection activities; and 2) provide the 'bare frame' around which to build LAEE scripts by identifying key categories of indicators associated with LAEEs, which are theorised to signposts opportunities for the pre...

The study found little to distinguish these two violent offender types in their socio-demographic profiles. Their behaviors, on the other hand, differed significantly in the degree to which they had interacted with co-conspirators, their antecedent event behaviors, and the degree to which they lacked information prior to their attack. Unlike lone t...

Led by UCL, the purpose of this deliverable is to set out an analytical framework, which will 1) guide and motivate the project's data collection activities; and 2) provide the 'bare frame' around which to build LAEE scripts by identifying key categories of indicators associated with LAEEs, which are theorised to signposts opportunities for the pre...

PurposeBehavioural crime linkage is underpinned by two assumptions: (a) that offenders exhibit some degree of consistency in the way they commit offences (their modus operandi [MO]); and, (b) that offenders can be differentiated on the basis of their offence behaviour. The majority of existing studies sample at most three crimes from an offender's...

A recent disciplinary offshoot of criminology, crime science (CS) defines itself as “the application of science to the control of crime.” One of its stated ambitions is to act as a cross-disciplinary linchpin in the domain of crime reduction. Despite many practical successes, notably in the area of situational crime prevention (SCP), CS has yet to...

This paper examines the phenomenon of extreme protest activities in the environmental and animal rights movements, and how their propagation can be simulated through the construction of agent-based models. It uses criminological theory to examine what factors cause a propensity for violent action to spread across social networks, and uses this as t...

This report introduces the crime prevention knowledge-base on evaluation and lays out the foundations of a systemist evaluation framework for online influence activities (OIAs). Different approaches to evaluation are assessed for suitability, including evidence-based and realist evaluation, and the pros and cons of the main families of research des...

This report introduces the crime prevention knowledge-base on evaluation and lays out the foundations of a systemist evaluation framework for online influence activities (OIAs). Different approaches to evaluation are assessed for suitability, including evidence-based and realist evaluation, and the pros and cons of the main families of research des...

form only given. Systems engineering requires a good understanding of user needs. For security systems, the potentially large number of threats and the diverse conditions that a product may experience can create practical challenges for those in charge of developing system requirements. The complexity involved in carrying out this task can be reduc...

The use of forensic evidence in the prosecution of terrorism cases was investigated using data provided by the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service. This article addresses the following questions: (1) What are the types of evidence used in the prosecution of terrorism cases in Britain between 1972 and 2008? (2) Are there differences be...

In this paper, the authors derive the specifications for a security system capable to detect so-called suspicious human activities using an affordable network of radar sensors. This work constitutes a first step towards the development of a robust day-and-night twenty-four hour surveillance system performing real-time automatic detection of terrori...