FAQ

Questions about tPP?

What are your inclusion criteria?

Generally, we think of cases that are included as falling into four broad categories: terrorism, extremism, hate/bias crimes, or political protest. In order for a case to be included in tPP, it has to meet several criteria. First, the crime must have been charged in the United States since January 1, 1990, and include at least one felony charge. Secondly, we only include crimes which a.) have a socio-political motive, or b.) are labeled as such by governmental authorities in speech or statute charged (e.g.,  charged as a hate crime, labeled a terrorist act in official statements). Socio-political motives can include crimes that aim to achieve a social or political goal, are motivated by bias (e.g., a hate crime), or support a group that seeks a socio-political goal or is motivated by bias (e.g., a hate group selling drugs to sustain itself).

Many of the crimes included can be considered non-violent offenses, such as acts of political protest, but are included because their aim includes a socio-political motive. In order to make this determination, researchers consult criminal charging documents, evidentiary affidavits, news reporting, and other public sources. In determining whether a crime is in furtherance of terrorism, extremism, hate/bias, or social protest (i.e., if it has a socio-political motive), we consider the criteria adapted from the Global Terrorism Database (pg 11 of Codebook version published October 2019): 

• Criterion 1: The act must be aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious, or social goal. In terms of economic goals, the exclusive pursuit of profit does not satisfy this criterion. It must involve the pursuit of more profound, systemic economic change.
• Criterion 2: There must be evidence of an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey some other message to a larger audience (or audiences) than the immediate victims. It is the act taken as a totality that is considered, irrespective if every individual involved in carrying out the act was aware of this intention. As long as any of the planners or decision-makers behind the attack intended to coerce, intimidate or publicize, the intentionality criterion is met.
• Criterion 3: The action must be outside the context of legitimate warfare activities. That is, the act must be outside the parameters permitted by international humanitarian law, insofar as it targets non-combatants.

Do you track all instances of political violence? Is the Prosecution Project meant to be a live record of all instances of political violence?

No. The purpose of the Prosecution Project has never been to track all acts of political violence. That would be duplicative, as other research projects such as the Global Terrorism Database aim to do just that. The purpose of tPP is to track how criminal cases driven by political violence and socio-political motives are prosecuted in court.

Based on our inclusion criteria established in 2017, we are only tracking cases of political violence and sociopolitical crime that result in a criminal prosecution at the felony level. This means that our unit of analysis is criminal cases and defendants, not specific acts. Each criminal defendant is a separate row of data, and crimes with no defendant are excluded. This means a crime may not be included for a number of reasons such as:

• • The crime meets the inclusion criteria, but it has no known perpetrator (i.e., unsolved crime).
  • The crime meets the inclusion criteria, there is a known perpetrator, but the individual was never charged with a crime (e.g., the individual is killed on site)
  • The crime meets the inclusion criteria, there is a known perpetrator, but the individual was only charged with misdemeanor crime(s).

While the rate and patterns of criminal cases may reflect the overall pace and pattern of political violence in the country, you cannot look at one and measure the other.

Why are there drug smuggling and other types of cases that seemingly lack a socio-political motive? Why are they included?

Drug cases and other ‘non-ideological’ cases are typically included for one of two reasons. This is discernible via the ‘reason for inclusion’ variable:

1. 1. The crime ‘supports organized political violence’ such as a group that manufactures or sells narcotics to fund its larger, socio-political goals. While the crimes may not be socio-political, they are required for the larger group to function. This is common with domestic groups like the Aryan Brotherhood or the Nazi Low Riders, or foreign groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Al Qaeda.
   2. The case meets the inclusion criteria via ‘state speech.’ This would include cases that are linked to drug cartels, which the US Department of State has designated “foreign terrorist organizations.” As of Febuary 20, 2025, this includes cases supporting Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Cartel del Noreste, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Cartel del Golfo, Carteles Unidos, Tren de Aragua, and Mara Salvatrucha. Other criminal gangs such as Gran Grif, Viv Ansanm, Los Choneros, Los Lobos were also added in Summer and Fall 2025. Alternatively, the defendant may have been charged with a ‘state speech’ crime such as a Violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act (e.g., Group ID: BURNETT) or a similarly-named crime such as “Terroristic Acts”, “Domestic Terrorism”, or other charges which label a crime rhetorically through words such as terrorism, extremism, and hate.

To exclude or include these cases via the Data Dashboard, use the ‘reason for inclusion’ variable, and select/deselect the ‘state speech’ and/or ‘supports organized political violence’ values as desired.

Why is a certain case not included?

As an all-volunteer team, we do our best to provide the most comprehensive data set possible. tPP was never meant to be a real-time tracker of incidents; rather, it is a curated dataset for better understanding how socio-political crime is prosecuted in the US. We are often asked why a particular case is not included, and while there can be a variety of methodological reasons, the most common reasons include:

• • The case is too new and is currently being pre-coded (1st round coding) or coded by a member of our team. Cases must be checked by a second person before being migrated to the public dataset. Typically, it takes a case several months to be added, and often, a case will not be fully coded until the defendant is sentenced, which often takes several years.
  • The case does meet our inclusion criteria. Oftentimes, this is because an individual was not charged with a crime. For example, if a defendant is killed in the commission of a crime, they are not criminally charged and thus not included. tPP is a dataset of criminal prosecutions, not acts of political violence.
  • We are unaware of the case. We gather new cases through secondary reporting, court records, and tips sent to us from journalists. We never claim to be a comprehensive account of all cases in the US…that’s simply not a realistic aim of an all-volunteer research project.

Why have you not included all of the Black Lives Matter-related protests and riots?

We have. We began tracking this on July 1, 2020, and documented the work here. There are 1743 cases in that dataset, available for analysis. Many of these cases are incomplete (e.g., sentencing outcome), as we have had a lot of difficulty finding court records for mass arrests (e.g., Group IDs such as DCUNREST, DCUNREST-SWANN, MPDMASSARREST), many of which did not result in felony indictments, despite being arrested for felony crimes. In these cases wherein a defendant is charged with a felony but it is dropped, we still include the case, but closing it out is often difficult due to a lack of available records to verify.

Why did you list nonviolent protests, for example, the blockade of an abortion provider, as an incident of ‘violent extremism’?

This is a common, disingenuous mischaracterization of our work. While we do include many incidents which would fit a standard definition of ‘nonviolent’ (e.g., building blockade, property vandalism), we distinguish these from crimes targeting humans (e.g., shootings, assaults) using the ‘people vs. property’ variable. Thus, these cases can be included or excluded by researchers by filtering on this basis. In the case of abortion clinic blockades (or the theft or release of animals more commonly seen from the left), while these cases are included as they represent socio-politically motivated protest actions, they are not coded as ‘violent’, but are marked as crimes targeting ‘property.’

I found a mistake in your data/I would like a case considered for inclusion/exclusion. How do I do that?

Since making our data public, we have always maintained a ‘feedback’ form for this purpose. It is located in the bottom right-hand corner of the data dashboard. If you see a mistake, miscoding, or other error, please bring it to our attention.

Who has produced this data?

tPP is the product of the efforts of more than 250 research volunteers who have been collecting data since 2017. In our early years, we collected and re-coded as many large datasets as we could find (see here), and since then, we have added cases daily. While the project has an Executive Director and leadership team, data coding is done by dozens of pre-coders and coders spread across the US and around the world.

While the project maintained public biographies of its team members from 2017-2025, we decided to remove these resources in Fall 2025 after a number of researchers received threats and malicious communications from individuals online. Since many of our volunteer team members are undergraduate students, we felt it was prudent to shield them from threatening emails and social media messages by removing their biographies from the website.

How do you control for researcher bias?

Each case passes through several individual researchers. Before completion, a case is added by a Pre-coder and then reviewed by a Senior Coder. Later, the case is completed by two Coders, checked by a second Senior Coder, and eventually reviewed by an Auditor. This means that by the time a case is considered complete, it has been reviewed by at least six individuals. All six researchers utilize the same coding criteria, as recorded in a Code Book. This approach seeks to reduce cognitive bias and ensure the most accurate data is included. The Code Book and its values are also included as part of the open-access data dashboard.

Why are your research methods secret? 

They are not.

Not only did we publish a book detailing the project’s design, methods, ethos, and intent, but we also provide a detailed Code Book with all external Data Requests, and include the same Code Book as part of the open-access data dashboard. Jouralists, researchers, and others who reach out to request data sets are provided the Code Book with their data to maximize accurate interpretation and dissemination. Like any qualitative coding research, users who interpret the findings without reviewing the definitions for individual values are likely to make false assumptions and misinterpretations.

Occasionally, we make changes in the Code Book (recorded in an Audit Record), and we welcome public feedback if users feel a Code Book variable (e.g., gender) or value (e.g., female) should be altered. Feedback can be sent via the form linked in the bottom right-hand corner of the data dashboard.

Are we partisan?

No. tPP is a non-partisan, ideologically neutral, empirically-driven, transparent data collection project. We aim to foster data-informed conversations about the way in which political violence and socio-politically motivated crime occur and are prosecuted in the contemporary US. The data can be used to make all manner of political, ideological, and criminological arguments, which is why we aim to make it available. Our only agenda is to make data more available for analysis so that we can better inform policymakers, journalists, academics, activists, and other scholars on issues of political violence, socio-political crime, and the criminal justice system.

Is tPP doxxing January 6, defendants?

No. tPP aims to catalog all cases within our inclusion criteria (i.e., felony cases of political violence prosecuted at the felony level in the US since 1990), including those arrested as part of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol building. Doxxing is the publishing of information about an individual to identify an unnamed person, typically with malicious intent. While tPP is cataloging January 6 defendants, we are not identifying them but rather collating case information widely available via various repositories including those maintained by USA Today, NPR, George Washington University, the Department of Justice, and others. No member of tPP is involved in open-source intelligence efforts to identify and name these defendants. Any accusation that tPP is doing this work as an “informant” in service of the US federal government (i.e., FBI, DHS, USAO, DOJ) is baseless libel. While members of tPP did submit written testimony on request to the January 6 Select Committee in 2022, this was in our capacity as researchers and subject matter experts, not as confidential human sources. The testimony focused on the operational security practices of the defendants and did not rely on any privileged information or sources.

Who owns the data?

tPP is an open-source data project that aims to make data available as widely and transparently as possible. The data is the product of countless hours of labor from hundreds of individuals. Team members agree to a Restricted Data Use Agreement (RDUA) at the beginning of the project, which outlines the intent regarding data ownership. The data belongs to all of us. On a legal-policy level, its management is the responsibility of a “restricted data investigator”, sometimes called a primary investigator, and “principal investigators” made up of our leadership team.

Questions for those interested in joining tPP?

What is the time commitment to work with tPP?

In order to join as a team member, you need to be able to budget 3 hours per week and we ask that team members stay for a minimum of 10 months. Team members meet one another every 2 weeks, and with the entire team once per month.

Do I need to be a student to work with tPP?

No. While many of our team members have been undergraduate students, many have been graduate/Ph.D. students, or professionals working in the field.

Can I get course credit for my work with tPP?

Yes. If you are attending a credit-earning institution (e.g., college or university), you can typically earn course credit through independent study, internship, co-op, practicum, capstone, or similar programs. Some schools require applications, research proposals, measured check-ins, mid-point or post-work evaluations, etc. Our team is happy to work with students to make these requirements as simple as possible. It is always best to plan ahead with your institution and work directly with a member of the faculty who will be needed to register the class.

Can I get paid to work on tPP?

Yes…or maybe. Some universities offer students stipends, honorariums, awards, or other forms of compensation for engaging with research, working for a nonprofit, or volunteering. The availability of these programs is specific to your institution or employer, but many tPP researchers have found ways to use their research time to earn some money. Alternatively, if you are in it for the long haul, you can work to write a grant to receive payment for your work and that of others. Grant writing is a key skill for many jobs—academic, governmental, and professional—and your ability to secure a grant could be a major boost to a resume or CV. On par with a major peer-reviewed, academic publication, receipt of a successful grant is likely one of the most distinguishing things you can add to a resume/CV, and besides putting money in your pocket, can be a real professional status boost. Grants can also be a lot of work, but the payoff is major, often hundreds of thousands of dollars to fairly compensate teams building knowledge. They can take a year or more, but if you’re just starting out, and you’re thinking of staying around, it’s one of the most strategic decisions you can make. If you’re interested, get in touch.

What can I get out of this?

We try not to think of things in such extractive, transactional terms….but quite a lot. For starters, you can learn a lot about qualitative research, team-based projects, criminal justice, political violence, and law, not to mention executive functioning skills like time management, project workflows, and team-based learning. These are things you will absorb simply by putting time in. You can also leverage these skill areas in job applications, graduate school, internships, awards, fellowships, and other opportunities that need something to help distinguish your resume/CV. You can meet interesting people at institutions around the world, and help to build a collectively-owned resource that helps bring better data to more people for more informed decision-making. You can work directly with lawyers, journalists, senior academics, and others through the advisory board and external data requests, and you can try your hand at real investigative work and open-source intelligence efforts.

What can I put into it?

As much as you want. You can use tPP to meet a college course requirement, pre-code the minimum number of cases bi-weekly, skip optional meetings, exclude yourself from special projects, and quit after your initial one-year commitment is over. If you did this, we would not hold it against you, and would be happy to serve as a professional reference. On the other hand, the people who have gotten the most out of tPP—the most intellectually, professionally, and academically—found a way to specialize their focus. Some focused on particular political groups—eco-terrorists, militias, anti-abortion militants—or certain demographic areas—dual citizens, racial groups, geographic regions—or functions of the project—auditing, training, updating cases, or analyzing data. If you decide to find an area of the project you would like to explore further, we are happy to help you utilize the project and its data in whatever way is helpful. You can put into tPP as much as you would like. You can think about us only during the 3 hours per week it takes to complete your work, or it can be something you think about in your downtime. Some have put in a few days, and many of us have been at it for years. Many have come and made the project so much better with their insight, labor, fortitude, brilliance, and care. We hope you will be one of these tPPers.

Questions for those interested in accessing tPP data?

Who can request data from tPP?

Anyone. We have fulfilled data requests from journalists, lawyers, policymakers, government officials, students, activists, academics, and a diverse range of practitioners working in fields such as criminal justice, intelligence, social services, immigration, public health, and many others.

What is the cost of receiving data from tPP?

Nothing. We do not charge any money to receive data. Our team is happy to create customized data sets based on the needs of the requester, and this concierge service comes at no cost. More information on data requests can be found here.

Can I access the data now, directly?

Yes. Direct access to a majority of tPP’s cases is available here. As cases are added and verified, they are migrated into this public dashboard daily.

Does tPP offer concierge ‘super user’ access to select individuals and groups?

Yes. We have worked with several universities, research centers, and others to set up recurring, customized access pathways for specific data needs. Along with access, we are happy to meet with your team to show you data access best practices and walk team members through how to make optimal use of tPP as a resource. If your organization is interested in more tailored access to data on a one-time or recurring basis, get in touch.