Prosecuting Political Violence

This volume unpacks the multidimensional realities of political violence, and how these crimes are dealt with throughout the US judicial system, using a mixed methods approach. The work seeks to challenge the often-noted problems with mainstream terrorism research, namely an overreliance on secondary sources, a scarcity of data-driven analyses, and a tendency for authors not to work collaboratively. This volume inverts these challenges, situating itself within primary-source materials, empirically studied through collaborative, inter-generational (statistical) analysis. Through a focused exploration of how these crimes are influenced by gender, ethnicity, ideology, tactical choice, geography, and citizenship, the chapters offered here represent scholarship from a pool of more than sixty authors. Utilizing a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, including regression and other forms of statistical analysis, Grounded Theory, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, and Discourse Analysis, the researchers in this book explore not only the subject of political violence and the law but also the craft of research. In bringing together these emerging voices, this volume seeks to challenge expertism, while privileging the empirical. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, and US politics.

Michael Loadenthal is the founder and Executive Director of the Prosecution Project, and the Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, Georgetown University, USA.

Foreword Solon Simmons 1. Introducing the Prosecution Project 2017-2020: Its Aims and Means Michael Loadenthal 2. Signals of How and Why Socio-Politically Motivated Crimes are Completed Tia Turner and Brenda Uriona 3. Labelling Terrorism Before and After 9/11 Lauren Donahoe 4. Friend or Foe? An Analysis of Factors Influencing Sentence Length in the Prosecution of Terrorism Megan Burtis and Liz Butler 5. What Tactic to Choose? Examining the Relationship Between Ideological Affiliation and Tactic Choice Elizabeth Springer 6. The Impact of Foreign Affiliation and Citizenship on the Prosecution of Political Violence in the United States Isabel Bielamowicz 7. Gender, Jail, and Injustice: Gender Interaction Effects on Judicial Sentencing Rhetoric Madison Weaver and Alexandria Doty 8. "What's in a name?" The Construction of Eco-Terrorism and Legal Repercussions of the AEPA/AETA Sarah M. Moore and Athena Chapekis 9. Conclusion: Collective Reflections on tPP and Undergraduate Scholarship Anwyn Bishop, Kathryn Blowers, Megan Burtis, Morgan Demboski, Lauren Donahoe, Sara Godfrey, Brendan McNamara, Stephanie Sorich, and Madison Weaver 10. Afterword Michael Loadenthal