Thread by @egavactip

I've been thinking a lot about extremist criminal recidivism recently, and this is a thread on that subject.

How often do extremists who committed an extremist-related crime come out of prison and commit another extremist-related crime? Especially for something like terrorism?

My knowledge base comes from having observed or tracked thousands of right-wing extremist-related crimes over the past 27 yrs, including hundreds of murders & scores of terrorist acts, so my thoughts are basically about RWE, though some are, I think, also applicable elsewhere.

Certainly recidivism does occur. Off the top f my head, I can think of white supremacists who committed several bias-related crimes. And I believe that recidivism is fairly high for the white-collar crimes of hard-core sovereign citizens.

But it seem to be different for incidents involving terrorist plots or attacks. I have a list of some 200 or so RWE terrorist incidents in the US over the past 30 years (and I know of many RWE terror incidents from the 80s) and it turns out repeat offenders are very rare indeed.

Note that I'm not talking about people, like Eric Rudolph, able to commit several acts before being caught, but about people who committed or attempted an act, was sent to prison, got out, and did or attempted another.

There are a few examples out there.

In the 1980s, Klan leader Glenn Miller got himself in big criminal trouble on major weapons charges. In 2014, in his 70s, he decided to go out in a blaze of glory with a shooting attack on Jewish institutions in Overland Park, Kansas.

In the 1980s, white supremacist James Von Brunn tried to attack the Federal Reserve. Decades later, in 2009, at age 88, he tried to launch a shooting attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In 2000, anti-government extremist Lloyd Barrus and a son were involved in a standoff/shootout during which they actually shot down a police helicopter. In 2017, Barrus, 62, and a different son ambushed and killed a Montana deputy sheriff.

But instances like this are quite rare. Now, when one examines RWE domestic terrorist incidents, some reasons why do become apparent. First, RWE do not always survive their attacks, especially standoffs or shootouts. They may be killed by responding police or may kill

themselves rather than be taken into custody. Others, like white supremacist rampage killer Keith Luke, may commit suicide later, in jail or prison.

For those who are apprehended, some end up being unable to re-offend because they are given the death sentence and executed--like Timothy McVeigh or Mark Anthony Stroman.

Rather more extremists serve out their lives in prison, thanks to death sentences never actually executed, to life sentences, and to effective life sentences, such as Brad Metcalf, a 46-year-old militia leader sentenced to 40 years. They cannot re-offend.

Others may leave prison, but only at an advanced age--and elderly ex-cons (in general, not just extremist ones) are far less likely to re-offend than younger ones. Age, and possibly infirmity, can have that effect.

But not every extremist involved in a terrorist incident necessarily even gets a lengthy prison sentence, or one that they only exit as a senior citizen. Yet even among such people, the number who assay another similar violent act/attempt seems low. Why is this?

One thing that occasionally happens when serving a prison sentence is that an extremist abandons their extremism for one reason or another. That is something that happened, for instance, to synagogue bomber Sean Gillespie (washingtonpost.com/local/the-kkk-…).

A larger number of others do not necessarily abandon their beliefs so much as they do the burning desire to act out violently on them. They just don't have the same passion they did before. Some may become inactive in their ideological movement, while others may rejoin it but

avoid major criminal activity. To what extent their previous penal experience may now be serving as a deterrent factor in such cases is hard to say, but it probably has an effect for at least some of them.

Another factor lies in the nature of extremist crime itself. Some people become career criminals because that is how they know to make a living; it becomes their way of life. Others may become repeat offenders because of chemical dependencies. But extremist crime is more of an

"option," in essence, esp. since one can even continue to be active within a movement without committing a major crime. So, when you combine all this together, the number of extremists who committed a major crime like DT, got sent to prison, got out, and attempted something

similar is quite low (and even those examples like Von Brunn, Miller, and Barrus have intriguingly long gaps between their two instances that cannot be explained by the length of prison sentences). I don't have the same depth of knowledge, but based on what I do know, I think

there seems to have been a similar relative shortage of significant recidivist acts among the violent left-wing extremists of the period 1965-85.