Research opportunities
The EDT is designed to support longitudinal research. By spring 2023, more than 300 cases from five EU countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Austria & Germany) have been entered in the EDT.
We will continue to enter data of convicted European terrorist and violent extremist offenders and a control group.
This data will open up several future research directions:
Identification of Critical Risk and Protective Factors for Terrorism: When enough control group cases of violent offenders have been entered into the EDT to enable statistical analyses, it will be possible to examine whether the assumed risk and protective factors for terrorism are able to distinguish between extremist violence and ordinary violence.
Terrorism and Role of Psychopathology: The EDT dataset can be used to examine psychopathology as potential risk factor for engagement in terrorism, considering contextual risk factors. This could not only involve research into mental disorders, but also the diagnosis of underlying traits or symptoms that lack a specific mental disorder diagnosis. It is important to take these traits and symptoms into account, also because a differentiated psychopathological approach is considered best practice for forensic experts.
Group Comparisons: Comparisons between different terrorist offender groups can be analysed. Offender groups in the EDT differ regarding their ideology (i.e., left, right, Islamist, ethno-nationalist, idiosyncratic individual causes), membership to groups (lone actor versus group member; leaders versus followers), age or gender. Analysis can focus on the comparison of risk and protective factors for engagement in terrorist and violent extremist offences between these different offender groups.
Risk Patterns: Interactions between risk factors can be examined, which can lead to the identification of ‘risk patterns’: clusters of risk factors, related to subgroups of the terrorist offender group. Another distinction in terms of risk patterns can be made with respect to the type of terrorist crime committed and the role of the offender in the terrorist group. One important research direction will be to distinguish between the various risk patterns that may be related to different types of terrorist crimes and to distinguish significant from non-significant factors on an empirical basis.
Terrorism Pathways: The EDT dataset allows for the examination of global pathways of risk factors related to childhood circumstances, the period of radicalization, as well as the year prior to the criminal act. This allows us to gain better insights into the importance of different biographical and socialization risk factors at different periods of a person’s lifecycle.
Validation of Risk Assessments for Terrorism: The EDT dataset can be used to validate risk assessment instruments like the Violent Extremist Risk Assessment instrument (VERA-2R). Research to evaluate and validate the risk factors for violent extremism is needed to improve the ability of the VERA-2R to assess and manage the risks for violent extremism and to make risk assessments more accurate for specific subgroups.
Effectiveness Judicial Interventions for Terrorist Offenders: Recidivism and disengagement can be monitored. This can clarify effectiveness of interventions targeted at terrorist offender group. This is highly relevant to the Ministries of Justice, antiterrorism agencies, and secret services of participating Member States to develop standardized approaches for violent extremism risk assessment with evidence-based risk prioritization, risk targeting, and risk-based rehabilitation of terrorist offenders.
Depending on the needs and priorities of academia, judicial organizations and national and European Justice organisations, other research directions will also be explored.