Situational prevention of terrorism. Remarks from the field of counterterrorism in the Netherlands on Newman and Clarke’s Policing Terrorism

Abstract

In this paper I shall discuss how criminal investigation might contribute to a situational approach to terrorism. Therefore I discuss Policing Terrorism by Newman and Clarke, and confront it with experiences from work in the field of counterterrorism: criminal investigations at the Dutch National Police Agency (NPA). I demonstrate that Newman and Clarke have too narrow a scope on policing terrorism, in particular when it comes to the role of criminal investigation. They restrict their focus to local police work in the phases immediately before and after a terrorist attack. This is unfortunate because case files show that criminal investigators play a central role in the prevention of terrorism. They intervene in earlier phases of terrorist preparation, target a wider range of terrorist offences than terrorist attacks, and prosecute radicals for their non-terrorist offences. Furthermore, criminal investigations offer insights that might be of help in developing an SCP approach to terrorism.