Security threat: acts

{Vivian + Puck}

{inleiding acts}

Types

Financial crime

{Intro what is financial crime.}

Examples of financial crime are burglary, robbery, ram-raiding, pickpocketing, raid, vehicle theft or cybercrime.

Organized crime

{Intro what is organized crime. }

Examples are drug crime, white collar crime, burglary or cybercrime.

High Impact crime

{Intro what is high impact crime.}

Examples are terrorism, homicide (such as crime passionel, financially motivated homicide and drug homicide), sexual crimes (such as rape, child molestations and sexual assault) or violent crimes (such as domestic, hate crime and assault).

Terrorism

Terrorism is often defined as “The premeditated use or threat of use of extra-normal violence or brutality by subnational groups to obtain a political, religious or ideological objective through intimidation of a huge audience, usually not directly involved with the policy making that the terrorists seek to influence”^[1]. Terroristic acts are often carried out by radicalized individuals (lone actor terrorists) or terrorist cells (groups and/or networks). The EU Directive 2017/541 on combating terrorism^[2], which all EU Member States were obliged to transpose in their national legislation by 8 September 2018, specifies that “terrorist offences are certain intentional acts which, given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organization when committed with the aim of:

●    seriously intimidating a population;

●    unduly compelling a government or international organization to perform or abstain from performing any act;

●    or seriously destabilizing or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organization.

Motives

There are different motives for crime. One can at least distinguish four types of motives: financial gain, boredom or compulsive behavior, impulse and ideological or political motives.

Ideological or political motives

Ideological of political motivation to act is based on individuals or groups that want to impose their political or cultural beliefs and ideals on others. In doing so, sometimes this results in crimes bases on these ideological or political beliefs. Crimes stemming from ideological or political motives are, for example, terrorism, mass killings, genocide, VIP abduction or assassination.

Terrorism

There can be four different terrorism motives that can be distinguished: ethno-nationalist and separatist terrorism, jihadist terrorism, right-wing terrorism and left-wing and anarchist terrorism.

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^[1] Phillips, P.J. (2016). The Economics of Terrorism. Routledge: New York.

^[2] Directive (EU) 2017/541 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2017 on combating terrorism and replacing Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA and amending Council Decision 2005/671/JHA, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32017L0541