Prison and Violent Political Extremism in the United States
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Prison and Violent Political Extremism in the United States Gary LaFree1 · Bo Jiang1 · Lauren C. Porter1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Objectives In the current study we consider the link between imprisonment and postprison participation in violent political extremism. We examine three research questions: (1) whether spending time in prison increases the post-release risk of engaging in violent acts; (2) whether political extremists who were radicalized in prison are more likely to commit violent acts than political extremists radicalized elsewhere; and (3) whether individuals who were in prison and radicalized there were more likely to engage in post-prison violent extremism compared to individuals who were in prison and did not radicalize there. Methods We perform a two-stage analysis where we first preprocess the data using a matching technique to approximate a fully blocked experimental design. Using the matched data, we then calculate the conditional odds ratio for engaging in violent extremism and estimate average treatment effects (ATE) of our outcomes of interest. Results Our results show that the effects of imprisonment and prison radicalization increases post-prison violent extremism by 78–187% for the logistic regression analysis, and 24.6–48.53% for the ATE analysis. Both analyses show that when radicalization occurs in the context of prison, the criminogenic effect of imprisonment is doubled. Conclusions In support of longstanding arguments that prison plays a major role in the identity and behavior of individuals after their release, we find consistent evidence that the post-prison use of politically motivated violence can be estimated in part by whether perpetrators spent time in prison and whether they were radicalized there. Keywords Prison · Political extremism · Terrorism · Radicalization · Coarsened exact matching
This research was supported by the National Institute of Justice through Award Number 2012-ZABX-0005 and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Award Number 699824. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Justice or the European Union. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia, November 2017. * Gary LaFree [email protected] 1
University of Maryland, College Park, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Introduction In recent years, scholars and policy makers have expressed considerable disagreement about the impact of imprisonment on violent political extremism. Some researchers, particularly outside of the United States, have reported connections between time in prison and participation in violent extremism (Brandon 2009; Mulcahy et al. 2013; Neumann 2010; Cilluffo et al. 2006b).1 Other researchers, particularly in the
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