2.D: Gary Lafree (University of Maryland), "PIRUS"

Hello.

In this lesson, I want to introduce you to a database called the profiles of

individual radicalization in the United States or PIRUS for short.

Many of the data collection projects that you've heard about through the START

consortium have focused on terrorism incidents.

For example, you may be familiar with the Global Terrorism Database,

which deals with events, terrorist events, over time.

We have other databases that look at terrorist groups, like the Big, Allied and

Dangerous database maintained by Victor Asal at SUNY Albany.

PIRUS is different than these other databases because instead of focusing

events or on terrorist groups.

It actually focuses on individuals who've either been arrested for

committing some kind of terrorist attack or

perhaps killed in the process of engaged in a terrorist event of some type.

So, we wanted to gather the PIRUS data for four main reasons and

I've got a slide that summarizes these That you can take a look at.

First there have been relatively few large scale

quantitative studies of terrorist in the United States.

In fact it's only been recently that any researchers have started to collect

individual data for terrorism in the United States.

So we though collecting pirates would fill an important need

that other researchers have not yet really fully responded to.

Secondly there have been very few theoretically Informed studies of why

people become terrorists or wh they engage in terrorist violence in the United States

and so our hope in this research was to start coming up with

theories of terrorism in the same way that criminologists have been coming up with

theories of why people engage In more ordinary types of crime.

And third, there have been few comparisons of

different pathways to radicalization in the United States.

So we are pretty sure that there are lots of different ways that people radicalize.

But there hasn't been a lot of empirical research.

Actually tracing these pathways or comparing them.

And finally they've been relatively few studies that use both quantitative and

qualitative data.

So with the PIRUS data we've collected about 1650 individual case

records of individuals so this would include almost 150 variables.

Things like their age and their gender, whether they have any

history of psychological problems, criminal record, and so on.

But in addition to that we've also been collecting more qualitative case studies.

And we have something like 110 of these case studies now.

So these go into much more of a narrative about the individual And

their past experiences.

So we found, this is also a unique aspect of this data that we have both

quantitative and qualitative options.

And I should mention that this project was originally a collaboration between myself,

Dr. John Sawyer, and Dr. Gary Ackerman.

Who wrote the original grant to the National Institute of Justice to

help collect the PIRUS data.

So let's turn to the next slide now which shows the key questions that we hope

to address with this database.

We are especially interested in whether we can find differences between

individuals that have engaged in terrorism but have been violent versus individuals

who have engaged in terrorism and have been non-violent.

For example, your only connection to a terrorist group may not be

committing some act of violence.

It might be you're an Accountant for the group, or a driver for the group, or

a cook for the group.

And quite a few of the cases in our database involve individuals who've

been engaged in.

Supporting a terrorist organization even though they haven't committed violence.

A second thing we hope to do with this project is to

explain better what the relationship is between beliefs and behaviors.

I think when people first started being very interested in radicalization,

the concept of radicalization There was a kind of an assumption that beliefs and

attitudes go together and it kind of locks that fashion that as we get more and

more radical in our beliefs, we naturally get more and

more radical in terms of our behaviors.

But we're seeing kind of these two sides of the same coin.

But as soon as we started doing research in this area,

we found lots of examples where it looked a lot more complicated than this.

If you do interviews, for example,

with people who have engaged in terrorism in the past like x people from IRA or

at the ETA, you quickly find that some of them have very radical

attitudes even though they may not be engaged in terrorism at the moment.

So it's not always the case that people with radical attitudes act on them.

And we also find some examples of the reverse,

where individuals do not seem to have a very detailed.

Attitudinal explanation of why they're engaged in terrorism.

And yet they're engaged in it.

They might have a relatively loose attitudinal affiliation

with terrorist organizations.

And yet in some ways that are pretty alarming they may still be

interested engaging in terrorism.

So we were interested in getting more information about this

linkage between radical beliefs and radical attitudes.

And radical behavior in this project.

A third contribution and type of question we hope to address with this research

is whether we see big differences across ideological forms of terrorism.

We're concentrating really on three main groups in the current project.

Individuals that are involved in various kinds of left-wing terrorist causes.

Those engaged in various types of right wing causes, and

those engaged in various kind of Islamist terrorist related causes.

So we're interested in trying to decide whether there are big differences across

these categories in terms of the kinds of things going on,

the kinds of behaviors going on, and so on.

And finally, fourth question we hope to answer in this research Is to figure out

which theories of terrorism are most promising in terms of understanding it.

Which theories best explain whether an individual is willing,

in fact, to engage in violent extremism and violent behavior.

So in the next slide, I'm going to show the total number of cases that

are classified as Islamists, far right and far left, by year, in the database.

So, this is the total number of PIRUS cases by ideology.

If you take a look at this slide,

the first thing you're going to see if you look at the sort of big picture,

is that the total number of cases in the database Are increasing over time.

That we have a lot more cases in the recent years than we have for

the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

That there is a pretty steady increase in time.

These results suggest an increasing amount of domestic US radicalization over time.

But I hasten to add that this interpretation is quite tricky.

Because these data are based on open sources and

the open sources were collected quite recently.

It's no doubt the case that part of the reason why you see this upswing

does not have to do with the amount of radicalization you're seeing but

with our ability to capture that radicalization.

Through open source data.

So, my strong hunch is part of the reason you get this upswing, is that we're

better able to find information on cases that happen more recently.

Nonetheless, it does look like a bit of an increase in domestic

radicalization over time.

If you look further at the cases by their ideology you can see that the late 1960s

and the early 1970s were dominated by actions by the far left.

So this would include famous groups like the Weather Underground, some of

the Puerto Rican separatist groups, some of the black nationalist groups, and so

on, which tended to be very active in the 60s, 70s and are much less active today.

In the 1980s, on the other hand, you see a spike among activities from the far right.

And even more so in the 1990s.

Especially after about 1993, and it's during this period you get a lot

off far right activity such as those made famous by the attack on Ruby Ridge.

If you don't remember this attack,

Ruby Ridge was the site of a deadly confrontation and later a siege.

It took place in northern Idaho in 1992 It involved Randy Weaver, his family,

his friend Kevin Harris and agents of the US Marshal's Service and also the FBI.

During the siege Randy's wife Vicky was eventually killed as was her son,

as was a US Marshal.

This incident received a lot of media attention.

There was a kind of public outcry of a Ruby Ridge.

And this outcry was even heightened subsequently during the siege and

wake of Texas which involved many of the same Federal agencies.

This ended up being a huge boost for the Malaysia movement in the United States and

it was sort of part of this huge surge in Far Right activity during this period.

Now if we turn next to Islamist ideologies, we can see for

the most part they come into the scene after 9/11 but it's important to note that

after the 9/11 activity for the far right appear to stay pretty active as well.

So if you sure look at the big picture you got a lot.

Activity from the far left in the 60s and

70s, the rise of the far right in the 80s, the rise of Islamist groups after

9/11 with a continued activity at fairly high levels for the far right.

So the PIRUS data in its current state allows us to start comparing

the characteristics of individuals Who come from different ideologies.

And the next slide will provide a quick overview of some of the things we're

learning about differences between these different ideological groups.

You'll see first, if we look at the Islamist groups,

you tend to find cliques more often with Islamist groups.

That is, small groups of individuals who get together on a regular basis.

This actually epitomizes the groups that worked during the 9/11 attacks,

for example.

Islamic groups not surprisingly are more likely to involve non-US citizens.

They're frequently likely to involve converts.

Quite a number of the Islamists attacks in the United States Involved individuals who

have converted to Islam, they weren't born into a family that was practicing Islam,

but they later converted.

They're also more likely to have been recruited by supporters.

Recruitment seems to be a very important, seems to be more important for

Islamist individuals than it does for the other two groups that we're comparing.

We also find less competition between the various Islamist groups than we do for

the other categories that we're looking.

If we move to the far left, we see that they're more likely to

report a change in performance prior to radicalization.

What do we mean by this?

Well for example, you get a poor evaluation at work or you get failing

grades in school, but there's often what seems to be a kind of triggering event for

the far left that is associated with their individual radicalization.

Also, not surprisingly, the far left are more likely to be students and

this makes sense because a lot of the activities particularly in 1960s and

1970s took place on college campuses.

We move now to the far right,

we also see some differences in this ideological category.

They tend to have the longest period of radicalization.

Sometimes, they've been involved in the kind of far right movement for

a long period of time.

They also tend to be more competitive with other groups.

The far right is distinctive in the sense that they also compete with other far

right groups, much more than either Islamists or far left groups do.

We are able to data to now start looking at some of the variables

that actually are associated with radical ideologies, and

allow us to perhaps distinguish between these radical ideologies.

And I've got some of these listed on the bottom of this slide as well.

We're finding, in fact, that there aren't many psychological differences across

these ideological groups which is kind of interesting because in some of the other

work we're doing we do find psychological differences,

but this does not seem to distinguish ideologies.

We also find no particular group is more likely to produce loners,

that is individuals who operate on their own as opposed to a group,

which is also I think interesting in terms of policy.

We might have thought loners would be more common in one of these groups.

We also aren't finding big differences in terms of social standing.

These groups are not certainly universally drawn from either poor, middle class,

or upper class groups.

They tend to be pretty broadly drawn.

And we also are not finding big differences in terms of prison

experiences, which I think will surprise some.

There it seemed to be pretty equal in terms of prison experiences.

We can also use the data to examine differences between different categories

of terrorism.

One of the categories that we've been especially interested in

is whether the individual acts as part of a group or

does the individual tend to act as a loner, tend to act on their own?

Sometimes researchers refer to the latter category as lone wolves.

So, in terms of the next slide,

it will show some ways we can compare lone wolves to the groups.

The basic analysis here would ask essentially what makes it more likely for

radicals to act alone?

As supposed to were acting as part of the group.

And how do lone actors [COUGH] Excuse me, differ from group actors.

The analysis presented in this part is based on about 1100 cases,

taken from the pirate’s database.

Now once we distinguished lone wolfs from individuals that act as part of a group.

We can ask a question,

what variables best determine whether you're a lone actor or a group actor?

And we provide some indication of variables

that make a difference in terms of this prediction in the next slide.

These are predictors of acting alone And one of the most interesting findings

we have here is that having a problem with psychological factors in the past.

Having some record of mental problems or even a mental illness,

which generally does not seem to be a big predictor of terrorism in general.

Does seem to be a predictor of being a lone actor.

Can see that a much greater proportion of lone

actors have some sort of psychological problems compared to group actors.

It also appears, and obviously this is not surprising, that lone actors are different

from those that work in groups in a couple of other ways.

They are also less likely to be able to maintain strong relationships

which obviously makes good sense, that's why they're lone actors.

And perhaps a good part of the reason why they work alone.

We also find that lone actors are more likely than

group actors to have a record of previous criminal activity.

And this is a bit different than much of the research on terrorism in the past too,

where we find group actors frequently do not have extensive criminal records,

may not have any criminal record at all.

So again, a bit of a departure from past research.

We also find that lone actors are less likely to be part of a radical network.

Again this makes sense this is part of the reason they're loners.

This includes they're less likely than others to

have a person that defines themselves as radical, a friend a radical family member.

A radical significant other.

They tend to be operating much more on their own.

And finally lone actors are somewhat more likely to have have some type of

crisis associated with what psychologists call a quest for significance.

Now in one of the next sessions, Dr is going to talk in much

greater detail about this phenomenal quest for significance.

But we can see here that it shows up as a distinguishing

characteristic of lone wolves versus group actors.

So it could be this person has had some kind of failed aspiration, could be abuse

as a child, abuse as an adult, could be being kicked out of the home by parents,

could be some type of trauma and so forth.

So you'll be hearing more about this in the future.

We can also use PIRUS data to map the total number of lone and group actors

over time and then to start thinking about which kinds of variables distinguish them.

In the next slide, we look at the total number of group actors and lone actors in

PIRUS for a long period of time, all the way back to the end of World War II.

First, we see a gentle increase in individuals engaged in terrorism over

time, and we've seen that in the previous slides as well.

So, in general we also see that group actors are more common than lone actors.

But note that compared to the number of group actors the number of

lone actors is increasing over time.

So much so, that in one recent year,

in 2010 I believe, we actually had more lone actors than group actors.

Now this is very important because it suggests that

this phenomena is going to be growing over time.

But it also is important because lone actors tend to be

deadlier than group actors.

In some other work we've been doing we've found that

lone actors have as much as four times, or are responsible as many as four times,

more casualties than individuals operating in groups.

And in general what the chart shows is that most of the activity from lone actors

happens after 9 11, rapidly increasing after 9 11.

We can now turn to some of the differences between lone actors and

group actors in a statistical sense.

If you look at the next slide,

we highlight some of the key differences between lone actors and group actors.

And we've highlighted here all those that are statistically significant differences.

So again, compared to group actors, lone actors are much more likely

to have psychological issues which we've talked about a little bit earlier.

Interestingly they are also more likely to have radicalized,

at least part, on the Internet.

So, this concern that as the Internet becomes more and

more important in our lives you might get a larger number of lone actors,

seems to be supported by this preliminary information from the PIRUS data.

From individuals who've radicalized in the United States.

We also see they're more likely to have committed violent acts in the past

than group actors.

And they're also more likely to have had a criminal record.

Interestingly, also, lone actors are more likely to

have had some kind of military experience compared to group actors.

Lone actors are also more likely to report what we could

call a conversion experience.

A kind of a-ha moment where they radicalize very rapidly, but

something really sets them off in a very direct way.

Group actors tend to be more gradual in terms of the radicalization experience.

So it essentially tells us that when we compare lone actors and group actors,

that the transition for lone actors may be more abrupt than it is for group actors.

Now we can also compare lone and group actors across ideologies.

And I provide an example of this in the next slide.

As we saw before, the phenomena of lone actors appears to be much more important

in recent years than in the past.

There were few cases in the 1970s and 1980s.

We see a big swing in cases after 9 11.

Relatively few lone wolves from the far left, however,

substantial numbers of Islamists and far-right lone actors.

In fact, for the most recent years after 2009, we find more lone actors

from the far-right than from either the far-left or from Islamist groups.

Okay, I'd just like to conclude this session by pointing out a few important

challenges and weaknesses with open-source data, such as PIRUS.

And by open-source, I mean unclassified data.

What are the challenges, what are the weaknesses of this kind of approach?

Well first off, there's lots of missing data.

For the 150 variables we're trying to record,

sometimes we're missing a lot of cases.

Getting information from online accounts, from court cases and

from records is complicated.

And it's fundamentally different than interviewing respondents.

If you think about it, when you interview a respondent, you'll ask them to answer,

for example, whether they have a criminal record, they can say yes or no.

And it's only missing if they refuse to give you any answer.

That's the only truly missing category.

But when we rely on open-sources on records and do not find information for

something like a criminal record, we often cannot be sure if there really

was no information, or there really was no criminal record, or whether we simply

weren't able to get the appropriate information from the available data.

So, this makes it very difficult for

you to tell whether our particular variable is truly missing or

it just was something that wasn't reported in the information you have available.

We also have greater sensitivity in releasing data

when it comes from open-sources than from some other databases.

In fact, in our own work at the Start Center,

we've sometimes had to take out names, of even convicted terrorists,

from our public databases because of privacy issues.

And these issues are multiplied greatly when you want to compare serious offenders

with individuals who have no criminal record.

You might wonder what the control group is in PIRUS, and the control group is

essentially people who have not engaged in violent activity but

is still engaged in some terrorist related activity.

It's much more sensitive for researchers to actually try to gather data

on individuals who've not engaged in any criminal activity.

So, everyone in PIRUS is the same in the sense they've all committed a crime.

And what this means is what we're really controlling for

is, or what we're really comparing, is not radicalized individuals who have not.

We're comparing individuals who've committed violent acts to individuals

who've been convicted of committing something less than violence.

Now we use a similar system to collect information for

many of our other databases.

You'll hear quite a bit about the Global Terrorism Database in these lectures for

examples.

But I think in some ways it may be easier to collect information from open-sources

on events, or even on groups, than it is on individuals.

Because getting detailed information on as many as 150 variables for

individuals is sometimes just not possible in open-sources.

Now we've just received additional funding for

the National Institute of Justice to be working more on this PIRUS database.

For example, we hope to be able to add data to the PIRUS data-set

to look specifically at foreign fighters, that is, individuals who've been going to

Syria and Iraq and other places to fight for terrorist organizations like ISIS.

We also are doing a project that's going to be looking at how individuals who've

radicalized in the United States compared to gang members in the United States.

So we'll be using the PIRUS data in the future in a variety of new, and hopefully,

creative and useful ways for policy makers.

In general, our hope is that the PIRUS data will be increasingly

useful as a source for understanding how and why people turn to terrorism.

Thanks very much for your intention in this module.

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