Publication

This brief contends that the way we perceive political/religious radicalization, which assumes that increased ideological zeal is a necessary stepping-stone to violence, needs to be modified by the idea that criminal violence can also serve this function. This adjustment is necessary, argue the brief's authors, in order to account for an unpleasant truth: the majority of suspected perpetrators behind recent terrorist attacks in the West had previously been involved in violent crime. Indeed, why should we assume that individuals must go through an intellectual process (heightened ideological conditioning) in order to embrace the use of violence if they've already learned to rely on it in their lives of crime?