UHCL faculty research briefs

October 6, 2017 | Jim Townsend

When denied their primary target, do terrorists strike elsewhere?

Criminals who are thwarted by situational crime prevention measures – such as increased security, fortifications or surveillance – may seek out more accessible if less appealing targets, known in criminologists’ parlance as “crime displacement.” Since 9/11, there’s been growing evidence that such prevention measures have been useful in thwarting opportunities for terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. But does this imply that terrorists, like other criminals, simply find other more vulnerable targets?  Not necessarily, says University of Houston-Clear Lake criminologist Henda Hsu in an article published in Justice Quarterly, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Hsu, an assistant professor of criminology, collaborated with criminal justice colleagues Bob Edward Vasquez of Texas State University and David McDowall of State University of New York at Albany to write “A Time-Series Analysis of Terrorism: Intervention, Displacement, and Diffusion of Benefits.”

The article focuses on the extent to which the difficulty of planning domestic U.S. attacks has been displaced to attacks on U.S. targets abroad. “This paper discusses the perception that displacement in terrorism is inevitable; that antiterrorism efforts merely relocate terrorism in some way,” Hsu writes.

Crime displacement, the article explains, is the notion that crime prevention efforts are capable of relocating crime, but they cannot reduce or interrupt it. The most common presentation of crime displacement invokes a shift in the crime’s physical location.

But crime displacement is difficult to document and test for causal relationships, Hsu points out. “At the heart of crime displacement is relocation, indeed, but this ‘relocation’ can come in the form of a shift in place, time, target, nature, or a combination of these possibilities.”

Citing his own 2015 research, Hsu cautions that crime displacement should not be viewed as an inevitability. “Regardless of its plausibility and popularity, the limited evidence in support of crime displacement prevents displacement from being viewed as a well-established phenomenon.”

Using data from the Global Terrorism Database (1994–2013), the authors tested the hypothesis that target-hardening efforts within the U.S. after 9/11 have reduced attacks on domestic targets but have increased attacks on U.S. targets abroad. However, their analysis showed no support for the displacement hypothesis. Instead, it pointed to a “diffusion-of-benefits” hypothesis.

“Rather than generating subsequent increases in attacks directed at U.S. targets abroad, we see a consistent, and mutually-reinforced, decline in attacks for both series,” the authors write, but also take care not to overstate their case. “Although substantive, the accumulation of the reductive effects is short-lived. We note that the pattern of the findings could be much more convincing.

“Our findings provide encouragement for U.S. policymakers that Homeland Security efforts to safeguard the U.S. from terrorist attacks will not simply induce terrorists to attack U.S. targets and interests abroad. The larger point is that our results provide support to recent criminological arguments that pervasive fears about the sureness of terrorism displacement in the terrorism literature may be unwarranted.”

The research concludes that the displacement of terrorism is a complex phenomenon involving the terrorists’ immediate goals, preferences, and operational opportunities and constraints.

The article was also featured in the August newsletter of the Crime and Justice Research Alliance, a resource created to provide policymakers, practitioners and the public access to relevant research on crime and criminal justice issues.

UHCL author’s books teach teachers critical thinking skills

Two books co-authored by a University of Houston-Clear Lake philosopher instruct educators on how to teach critical-thinking skills to students from elementary through high school – skills that the authors note have been long subordinated in public education.

“Much of what we teach in the various school disciplines is formatted for students to recognize answers on standardized objective tests. This does not teach anyone how to reason a path further away from current conventionally held errors,” writes UHCL Professor Paul A. Wagner and his co-authors in “Focus on Thinking: Engaging Educators in Higher-Order Thinking.” Wagner is a professor of philosophy in the College of Human Sciences and Humanities and a professor of leadership and educational policy in the College of Education.

“The world is waiting to be explored. There will be theories and observations that pave the way to greater understanding. But it is reasoning, and ever-better well-reasoned experimentation, that leads to better schemata for understanding than those employed in the past.”

“Focus on Thinking” addresses subjects including “speculative wonderment, reflection, understanding, truth seeking, and finally planning and decision making. Adolescents have to do more than understand the world better; they need to plan for their role in it as well,” the authors say.

The book includes chapters of scripted exercises that teachers can use to engage students in better thinking practices at different age levels. Appendices offer teachers further resources, including a sizable appendix on informal logic and fallacies. “The typical middle and secondary school teacher may have had no training in formal thinking practices, and these benchmarks of good thinking strategies and red flags alerting fallacious reasoning may prove invaluable.”

Wagner collaborated on this book and a companion edition, “Thinking Beyond the Test: Strategies for Re-Introducing Higher-Level Thinking Skills,” with educational psychologists Daphne D. Johnson and Daniel Fasko Jr., along with Frank Fair, editor of the philosophy journal Inquiry. Johnson and Fair are on the faculty of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Fasko is at Bowling Green State University in Kentucky.

While “Thinking Beyond” was written primarily for teachers, Wagner and collaborators say parents may also find it useful in preparing their children for the challenges of learning – and life.

“This book reinforces the idea that there are dispositions that must be developed for students to enter fully into the world of the ‘Great Conversation of Humankind’,” the authors say.

“Thinking Beyond” devotes two chapters to a review of learning theory. Foremost, the authors describe the book as a “toolbox of strategies and scripts that a teacher can learn to use at those teachable moments that still arise in classrooms.”

The book is endorsed by renowned philosopher and critical thinking expert Michael Scriven, former president of the American Educational Research Association, American Evaluation Association, Association of Informal Logic and Critical Thinking, and the American Philosophical Association.

Tracing roots to Socratic teaching practices, the U.S. National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking defines critical thinking as the “intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

Both books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites in print and digital formats.