Techniques of Neutralization and Violent Extremists in the United States

• In Event: Before the Attack: Theoretical and Empirical work on Terrorism and Hate Crime

Abstract

This study tests Sykes and Matza's neutralization theory by investigating the use of techniques of neutralization by violent extremists in the United States. Neutralization theory holds that offenders justify their criminal behavior in order to neutralize feelings of guilt. While the theory was originally used to explain juvenile offending, the theory has been applied to a variety of other crime types, including terrorism and other forms of ideologically motivated violence. The limited prior evidence shows that denial of victim is the most common technique used by ideologically motivated offenders. The current study utilizes Liddick’s (2013) expanded list of techniques of neutralization in analysis of U.S. Extremist Crime Database data on far-right, Islamist, far-left, and ALF/ELF (animal/environmental rights) extremists. Preliminary results show that the majority of perpetrators of ideologically motivated violence employed techniques of neutralization, with denial of victim appearing frequently across ideology type, and that there are differences in use of the techniques between extremists of different ideologies (i.e., ALF/ELF extremists were more likely to engage in appeals to a higher principle). The study also addresses the issue of temporal order, accounting for the timing of extremists’ neutralizing statements in relation to the commission of their offense.

Authors

• Colleen E. Mills, Penn State Abington

• Celinet Duran, SUNY Oswego