Lone Wolf Terrorism: Prudence in the Lone Wolf’s Planning and the Time Delay between Acts of Lone Wolf Terrorism

Abstract

The lone wolf terrorist has been described as a most significant threat. His independent nature makes it difficult for law enforcement to know about the existence of a lone wolf before he strikes. Economic analysis may contribute to the investigative process. For lone wolves who have undertaken acts of terrorism and who remain at large, we may be able to determine whether we should expect the length of time between his most recent attack and his next attack to be longer or shorter than average. When lone wolf terrorism is characterised by ‘copy cat’ acts of violence we may be able to determine whether we should expect an average, below average or above average time delay between the initial attack and the emergence of imitation acts. When an imitation act occurs or when a ‘serial’ lone wolf strikes another time, the length of time between the last act and the next act may contain information that is useful to the development of a profile of the unknown lone wolf terrorist. These results and the operational advice that may be provided to law enforcement and security agencies emerge from the development of an economic theory of the lone wolf terrorist in which particular theoretical attention is given to the ‘prudence’ of the lone wolf’s planning.