Abstract
Few studies have examined the sentencing outcomes of individuals convicted of terrorism or violent extremism-related offences in the United Kingdom (UK). Home Office data can tell us the number of persons arrested for terrorist-related activity and subsequent outcomes, such as charges and convictions by legislation, but this data does not provide a complete picture of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK. This is due in part to the existence of three distinct legal jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and also to differences in the types of data collected and counting practices in operation. Moreover, the official data available publicly are only summary statistics, with no separate data for Scotland. This article addresses this research gap in our knowledge of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK by utilising data from an original dataset compiled by the research team from open sources on the sentencing outcomes of individuals (n=809) convicted of terrorism, terrorism-related, and violent extremism offences over a 21-year period (April 2001-March 2022). The analysis of this dataset has allowed us to test a range of hypotheses in relation to not only motivation but also offence type, gender, age, co-defendants and having multiple counts (i.e. facing multiple charges). Limitations of the study are also discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 65-89 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Perspectives on Terrorism |
| Volume | XVIII |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Dec 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Perspectives on Terrorism publications are published in open access format and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Funder
This research was funded by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (ESRC Award: ES/ V002775/1), which is funded in part by the UK Home Office (see the public grant decision here: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES percent2FV002775 percent2F1).Funding
This research was funded by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (ESRC Award: ES/ V002775/1), which is funded in part by the UK Home Office (see the public grant decision here: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES percent2FV002775 percent2F1).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats | ESRC Award: ES/ V002775/1 |
Keywords
- Terrorism
- sentencing
- prosecution
- imprisonment
- legislation
- Counter-terrorism
Themes
- Security and Resilience
