Date of Award

1-1-2011

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

School of Criminal Justice

Content Description

1 online resource (ix, 113 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Graeme Newman

Committee Members

Robert Apel, Joshua Freilich, Alan Lizotte, Richard Legault

Keywords

displacement, homeland security, situational crime prevention, substitution effect, terrorism, terrorist attacks, Crime prevention, Crime, Terrorism

Subject Categories

Criminology

Abstract

Since T.A Repetto first introduced crime displacement in 1976, situational crime prevention researchers have long been challenged by the assumption that displacement is an unavoidable consequence of focused crime prevention measures. Despite evidence that criminals do not inevitably shift their offending behavior in response to crime prevention initiatives, recent efforts to extend situational prevention to terrorism have been met with criticisms of displacement. This study examines whether terrorists displace their attacks by changing their methods once the opportunities to carry out acts of terrorism are blocked. To accomplish this, the author examines, through the use of the newly synthesized Global Terrorism Database, whether the situational prevention of a terrorist attack results in the change of terrorists' weapon and target choice, and types of attacks. Employing autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) techniques, this study conducts a set of interrupted time-series analyses to evaluate the impact of three situational counterterrorism measures. The results of the analyses support the situational crime prevention theorists' claim that terrorism prevention through opportunity reduction is effective and without, for most of the cases, the consequence of displacement.

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