Preventing successful assassination attacks by terrorists: an environmental criminology approach

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use an environmental criminology and situational crime prevention (SCP) framework to study global assassinations carried out by terrorists. The authors set forth a series of hypotheses to explain successful and unsuccessful assassination incidents. Design/methodology/approach The authors use assassination data from the Global Terrorism Database from 1970 to 2014 to estimate a series binary logistic regression models. Findings Results indicate that various situational factors contribute to successful assassinations, such as target types, weapon types, total fatalities, and injuries. Practical implications These findings suggest that environmental criminology and SCP are valuable in developing prevention measures that thwart and disrupt attempted assassinations by terrorists. Originality/value Criminology has yet to apply environmental criminology and SCP to assassinations, a tactic often used by terrorists. This paper thus extends the existing assassination, terrorism, and criminology literature by applying this framework to assassinations performed by terrorists.