Domestic Terrorism: Using Psychosocial, Trauma-Related, and Life History Variables to Inform Intervention and Prevention

The goal of this effort is to shed light on the profiles of contemporary domestic terrorists and violent extremists and—through the additional inclusion of event-level data—make possible analysis that connects these variables with event-related data, such as weapon choice and lethality. The proposed research is a quantitative study to create and analyze the first publicly available, offender-level terrorism database that prioritizes psychosocial, trauma-related, and life history variables while including event-level data. The Domestic Terrorism Offender-Level Database (DTOLD), will be coded across over 200 psychosocial, trauma-related, and life history variables for an estimated 400 individuals who have committed acts of domestic terrorism since 2000. Because DTOLD will be designed to facilitate comparison with the NIJ-funded Mass Shooter Database (2018-75-CX-0023; hereafter, The Violence Project (TVP)), the proposed research aims to address a set of comparative questions both across domestic terrorist ideologies and between domestic terrorists and mass shooters. The proposed effort aims to improve information on the similarities and differences across these subcategories to inform the development of prevention and intervention programming at the state, local, territorial, and tribal levels.  "Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law," and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR  200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF