NCJ Number
191296
Date Published
1998
Length
37 pages
Annotation
This chapter discusses research on terrorism, hate crime, and antigovernment violence.
Abstract
Throughout history, hatred has driven people to extremes of violence against others for a number of reasons. Domestic terrorism is still a crime in search of a sociological definition. It is defined by the Federal Government as “a violent act or an act dangerous to human life in violation of the criminal laws, to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in the furtherance of political or social objectives.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is responsible for enumerating incidents of domestic terrorism. But a variety of bureaucratic, legal, and learned contradictions surround this issue. The research community lacks consensus over the definition of domestic terrorism and there are actually no laws against domestic terrorism. Official data on domestic terrorism have become less comprehensive. Incidents of domestic terrorism are especially susceptible to legal and bureaucratic ambiguities, and their proportional unreported rate probably exceeds that of index crimes. No national public data source on the extent of hate crime existed before the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act. The purpose of the act was to collect and disseminate the extent and characteristics of hate crime. The FBI’s program on hate crime statistics has successfully increased comprehensiveness and rates of reporting, and the discovery of criminological trends. The collection of dissemination of research on United States terrorism could benefit from a clearinghouse where information can be available across the country. Timely and comprehensive statistics on domestic terrorism should be provided to advance social scientific knowledge. Researchers see the continued potential for antigovernment violence. The potential for international terrorism against Federal prisons and Federal courts may increase. 4 tables