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Environment tackled

Description

This tool is useful to conduct a structured professional judgement to assess individuals that might engage in terrorism. However, it does not predict, rather it warns which individual should receive priority attention.

Referring PASTEL cluster

Society

Objectives

structured professional judgement to assess individuals that might engage in terrorism. However, it does not predict, rather it warns which individual should receive priority attention.

Target Groups

Prisoners

End Users

Healthcare services, Intelligence, LEAs, Criminal justice system

Key findings

TRAP-18 consists of eight proximal warning behaviours (pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst, leakage, directly communicated threat and last resort behaviour) and ten distal characteristics (personal grievance and moral outrage, framed by an ideology, failure to affiliate with extremist or other group, dependence on the virtual community, thwarting of occupational goals, changing in thinking and emotion, failure of sexual intimate pairbonding, mental disorder, creativity and innovation, history of criminal violence). All the proximal warning behaviours are dynamic and based on patterns of behaviour, whilst several of the distal characteristics (e.g. history of mental disorder) are static risk factors. Although protective factors are not explicitly included, the absence of certain indicators (proximal warning behaviours and distal characteristics) are protective. Further, the narrative questions ask about the presence of protective factors in individual cases. It provides a clinical understanding that may inform risk assessment and intervention. As a tool, it also has the potential to contribute to the prioritisation of cases in a pre-crime scenario, as well as formulation, reformulation and ongoing risk management in a post-crime situation. Moreover, it can be applied to different forms of terrorism - jihadists, right-wing extremists and single issue attacks.

referring project

PARTICIPATION