The posts below are brief summaries of 14-week research projects designed and carried out by our student team. tPP plans to release the full studies as peer-reviewed publications in the future.
The Influence Ideological Affiliation Can Have on Length of Prison Sentence
Monica Gomes
When it comes to the ideological affiliation of a criminal and its influence on a potential or carried through crime with a focus on material support charged crimes, the length of sentence can seemingly be predicted. Not predicted in a way that we are able to figure out what the exact length of sentence will be, but perhaps a direction it may go. The findings for this research study signify just this. To easily compare the data, I compiled a chart of basic math calculations including the median, mode, mean, and range. The categories where the crimes are not ideologically affiliated or are unclear of the affiliation, if there is one, produced the lowest values in terms of length of sentence compared to any other ideological affiliation. This is possibly due to the fact that these crimes in particular are not associated with any large entity or terrorist organization with the potential to endanger the greater society.
Ideological affiliations that do pose as a potentially larger risk are the rightist and leftist affiliations. Although there are separate categories within the leftist and rightist ideologies, for this study I decided to combine all leftist and all rightist ideologies because the number of cases included in the subject sample were very low and putting them together would produce more significant results. The values that were calculated for this dataset to observe showed that the rightist and leftist ideological affiliations were not the highest but not the lowest values.
These two affiliations traded off with one being higher than the other and then being the lower value of the two. Therefore, that places these affiliations at similar outcomes to each other. The highest values lie within the nationalist- separatist and salafi/jihadist/islamist affiliations with nationalist- separatist having slightly higher values overall. The only exception to this portion of the data is that the greatest number for length of sentence among the ideological affiliations is salafi/jihadist/islamist, however, the highest average for lengths of sentence is nationalist- separatist.
A potential factor that goes into this result is that there are only eighteen cases that are identified as nationalist- separatist while there are two hundred and forty-three salafi/jihadist/islamist. The nationalist- separatist, salafi/jihadist/islamist, and leftist ideological affiliations have a sentence length of zero for their least number of months. This is due to those cases being acquitted but the case still being included into the original tPP database. Criminal charges against perpetrators who engage in material support and are prosecuted for that crime is incredibly complicated and prosecutors must consider many different factors.
First of all, previously prosecuted crimes must be taken into account as well as the intent of the perpetrator. High profile criminal charges call for a more severe sentencing, which becomes increased even more with high intensity previous crimes. Another important factor is intent, this could be an intention as part of a terrorist organization or just the intent to promote or support one. These factors are considered into the criminal cases included in this dataset that ultimately determine and explain the trends shown through the collected data.
The subject and focus of this research is an important extension to the wider field of study of crimes throughout the United States, with an additional lens looking at terrorism crimes. Crime, specifically incarceration, has been and is a prevalent distinction that sets the United States and other nations apart which leaves people curious as to why this is the case. Because of that, endless amounts of research have been done to unveil the possible meanings and reasons behind this fact.
This study is able to contribute to that knowledge and give an explanation to those high incarceration rates. The ability to apply previous findings and knowledge to this less recognized area of crime studies can be of practical use when creating future policies regarding the subject. More specific data and observation of that data, particularly speaking towards ideological affiliation and length of sentence, will help redirect or reevaluate current policies and what producers can do to create a more just system.
The hypothesis created in the proposal wanted to examine material support cases pre-9/11 and post-9/11. In doing this, the research would have found trends and themes from the data to observe any disparities between ideological affiliation and if that was a determiner for the proposed length of sentence of the perpetrator. This kind of data would have been able to make assumptions and locate any forms of discrimination within the justice system against individuals who possessed certain beliefs and if it has been a persistent issue. The justice system supposedly does not have any prejudices against certain individuals and purely look at the facts when determining a length of sentence, but as we know, human error is an inevitable factor when dealing with these types of situations.
Bias and emotions, as well as opinions, are factors that will be included when involved in the justice system while dealing with crime cases whether it is intended or not. The original hypothesis wanted to explore this concept to evaluate and analyze if these types of injustices occurred, however, I had to reroute my research topic because there weren’t enough cases pre-9/11 to build a strong enough database to compare to post-9/11 crime cases. I will say that in regard to material support, there are many salafi/jihadist/islamist ideologies, which is expected because this group of individuals is heavily associated with larger groups of people, or organizations, with the intent of material support for their plans to carry out action.
The world of crime and criminal studies is such a large entity that has an unlimited amount of data and information that it is difficult to find an area of concern that hasn’t been researched already. Today’s society comes with an enormous list of issues and occurrences that are considered disturbing to the majority of society which provides researchers with the resources to examine and create their own inferences and their own basis of knowledge that they can eventually share with others. In relatively recent years, terrorism studies have been more thoroughly explored due to the occurrences that took place on September 11, 2001.
Crimes that are committed who are in affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization are not dealt with lightly and it has been a mission to eradicate any forms of associations with these organizations throughout the United States. Because of this incident, terrorism crimes have been under the eye of many researchers who haven’t left much room for different thought. In exploring different areas of this field in particular, I think it would be important to look at mapping as a methodology to locate where future crimes may occur based on tactic and the perpetrator’s ideological affiliation. I believe that these components to a crime can say a lot about where others may target next and how they will go about doing their crime. It could possibly prevent future occurrences by recognizing the patterns that previous criminals have pursued.