Assessing the environmental risk factors for terrorism: Operationalising S5 (ASSESS-5)

Executive Summary

Existing processes, methods and tools to identify and evaluate the risk of involvement in terrorism and violent extremism (ITVE) operate largely at the individual level. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to identifying and evaluating the characteristics of the socio-physical contexts (i.e. environments, settings, places)  which may contribute to the emergence of the risk of ITVE, or, conversely, to its suppression.

This project investigated the feasibility of developing a framework to assess the risk of involvement in terrorism and violent extremism at the level of environment. This requirement was conducted via a modified e-Delphi exercise with UK front-line practitioners in order to produce a shortlist of indicators that might characterise ITVE risk-promoting and risk-suppressing systems (societies), social ecologies (neighbourhoods) and settings, as well as the risk of individual selection for exposure.

The modified eDelphi exercise consisted of three phases. In Phase 1, a systematic literature search was carried out to produce a raw list of environmental risk and protective indicators associated with ITVE.  In Phase 2, the narrow list of indicators generated by the literature search (now supplemented by additional environmental ‘place’ indicators drawn from the criminological literature) was translated into an online survey, which was administered to a group of ITVE experts for their professional opinion. This survey produced a further reduced list of indicators. In a similar manner a second online survey was then administered (n = 43) to produce a final shortlist of indicators. Finally in Phase 3, a focus group with a small set of ITVE experts (most of whom had not taken part in the survey rounds) was conducted to gather qualitative feedback on the shortlist produced by the two rounds of online surveys, as well as comments on the exercise as a whole and the desirability of going forward with the development of a risk analysis tool.

Key conclusions from the modified e-Delphi exercise were:

• By-and-large, neither professional role nor level of experience had a significant effect on respondents' evaluation of indicators.
• The majority of the indicators included in the survey were not rated as relevant by the survey respondents, though neither did they attract strong levels of disagreement.
• None of the indicators retained garnered a high level of agreement, though a few were agreed upon somewhat more highly than others, all of them risk indicators (as opposed to protective indicators).
• At the system level, no protective indicators passed the threshold for retention.
• At the system level, all of the risk indicators that were retained related to media communication as it impacted society-wide moral contexts.
• The majority of shortlisted risk indicators are found at the social ecological (neighbourhood and community) and selection (individual) levels of analysis.
• Although more respondents reported thinking that online exposure contributes more to ITVE risk than offline exposure, a majority of the higher-rated indicators relate to sites and processes of exposure 'in the real world', reflecting the ambivalence of the broader academic literature on the topic of online versus offline radicalisation.
• Social ecological indicators which received higher levels of agreement all signal the presence of an extremist moral context (presence of extremist groups; public expression and tolerance towards extremist ideas), as do many of the other shortlisted indicators.
• At the social ecological level, many of the shortlisted indicators are markers of processes such as segregation (on the risk side) and collective efficacy (on the protective side), well-evidenced processes commonly used to explain the increase or decrease of crime and disorder in neighbourhoods and communities.
• As a first exploration of the basis for an operational ITVE environmental risk assessment framework, the project's findings show that much more work is needed to establish a robust knowledge base for such a framework. It is notable, however, that while some of the survey respondents expressed scepticism as to the role of the environment in explaining ITVE, the responses themselves suggest that it may be more an instance of not knowing, rather than disagreeing outright.
• The value of an environmental risk analysis framework for frontline practitioners may not reside so much in providing a list of risk indicators (that could turn out to be insufficiently discriminatory or whose meaning will vary with context), but rather in providing a set of questions risk assessors may not have thought to ask, and, in turn, bringing to mind levers they may not have thought to pull. In other words, the value of such an instrument could be to structure their professional judgement in such a way as to take environmental factors more systematically into account. Whether this would contribute beneficially to their assessment and/or management activity remains an open empirical question.

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The authors would like to give thanks to Philip Doherty for his contributions on this report.