The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve: An Analysis

of American Islamist Terrorist Offenders

and Age-Specific Propensity for Participation
in Violent and Nonviolent Incidents

Jytte Klausen, Brandeis University

Tyler Morrill, Brandeis University
Rosanne Libretti, Brandeis University

Objective. This study examines the age-crime relationship among terrorist offenders. Method. This
study relies on a data set of over 600 American terrorism offenders inspired by one of three Islamist
groups: Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. Results. We find that the pattern of violent Islamist crime
in the United States departs from the standard age-crime curve in significant ways. Violent action
among terrorist offenders peaks at a later age and occurs across a broader age range than is the case
for ordinary violent crimes.

After the January 2015 shootings in Paris in which 17 people were killed, it was reported
that the French police had lifted surveillance of the two Charlie Hebdo assassins six months
prior to the attacks. The assassins were judged to be “too old” to be considered a risk and so
not to warrant ongoing monitoring. Said Kouachi was 34 and his younger brother, Chérif,
was 32 (Lichfield, 2015).
It would appear that, in this case, the French police were in error but age is one of the few
robust predictors of who will commit a violent crime and who will not. The French police
would seem to have had scientific justification for their decision. It is often said among
criminologists that if a man reaches the age of 30 without committing a violent crime,
he is unlikely ever to commit one. Timothy McVeigh, for example, was 26 on the day he
bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. The classic formulation of the age-crime
curve is even steeper and holds that the propensity for crimes peaks in late adolescence and
the early 20s, and then peters off (Hirschi, 1983).
Was the problem bad data or did the police choose the wrong cut-off point? Violent
terrorist crimes are different from other types of violent crime by reason of being politically

∗
Direct correspondence to Jytte Klausen, Department of Politics, MS 058, Brandeis University, Waltham,
MA 02454 ⟨klausen@brandeis.edu⟩. The research for this article was supported by the U.S. Department
of Justice, Office of Justice Program, the National Institute of Justice, “Prisoner Recollections: The Role
of Internet Use and Real-Life Networks in the Early Radicalization of Islamist Terrorist Offenders” (Award
no. 2013-ZA-BX-0005) and “The Role of Social Networks in the Evolution of Al Qaeda-Inspired Violent
Extremism in the United States, 1993–2013” (Award no. 2012-ZA-BX-0006). Opinions or points of view
expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies
of the U.S. Department of Justice. Special thanks to Nathaniel Barr, Selene Campion, Katherine Dowling,
Cristina Ferlauto, Aileen Finnin, Zachary Herman, Nathan Needle, Ula Rutkowska, and Ryan Yuffe, all of
whom assisted on the project. Additional funding was provided by Brandeis University, the Theodore and
Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Research and Creative Projects in Arts and Sciences, and the Research Circle
on Democracy and Cultural Pluralism. Support from Palantir Technologies is also gratefully acknowledged.
SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 97, Number 1, March 2016
C 2016 by the Southwestern Social Science Association
⃝
DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12249
20 Social Science Quarterly
motivated, and the offenders may not exhibit the same age characteristic typical of non-
political violent criminals. Or was it that the French attackers were the inevitable outliers
from the general rule? If you base risk assessment on probability, you will unavoidably, even
tragically, sometimes be wrong.
It may be that probabilistic reasoning has no place in counterterrorism. By their very
nature terrorist acts are extraordinary events, and often only happenstance or enforcement
failures set the successful attack off from one that has been averted. Then there is the small-
numbers problem. Making solid—and precise—statistical inference from a small number
of cases is difficult and sometimes impossible. Any estimates will be “fuzzy.” In 2008
Karl Roberts and John Horgan reviewed the literature on risk assessment, distinguishing
between general and specific risk factors. They argued that a risk model could be helpful
to the prioritization of counterterrorism tools but warned also that the fact that terrorist
incidents are rare and we have only a small data set from which to make inferences about
terrorist behavior are obstacles to efforts to build empirical models for risk assessment (see
also Pressman, 2012).
These are the questions we attempt to answer here. Specifically, what role, if any, should
age serve in the prioritizing of resources in counterterrorism policing? We set out in
unchartered waters. This is to our knowledge the first study to use empirical data to model
the age-crime curve for terrorism offenders. A caveat is that while the data set is large for
a study of domestic terrorists, it is still subject to the problem identified by Roberts and
Horgan regarding attempts to draw statistical inferences from relatively small base numbers.

Can the Age-Crime Curve Axiom Help Counterterrorism Efforts?

To test the application of the age-crime axiom to terrorist offenders, the study was set
up on the model of a classic cohort and case-control study design contrasting Islamist
terrorism offenders against the age-crime relationship among nonpolitical offenders. The
data about the age-crime curve among violent nonpolitical offenders were taken from an
influential historical study conducted by Darrell J. Steffensmeier and his colleagues Emilie
Andersen Allan, Miles D. Harer, and Cathy Streifel at Pennsylvania State University (1989;
see also Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1991).
No official statistics exist listing the ages and crime types of terrorism offenders com-
parable to crime statistics reporting. The research instead relies on a unique data set of
nearly 600 American terrorism offenders inspired by one of three Islamist groups: Hamas,
Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda (Klausen, n.d.). The methodology is an example of cliometrics, the
new econometric history often used in historical sociology (Clio is the muse of history;
“metrics” is self-explanatory). All data were collected from court records and other public
documentation about American citizens and residents who committed terrorist offenses
inspired by Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-aligned groups between the early 1990s and the con-
clusion of 2014. Following a codebook, data were entered into a spreadsheet and analyzed
using statistical tools. To be included in the data collection an individual must have been
convicted or publicly designated by U.S. authorities as having committed terrorism-related
crimes connected to Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism or to Hamas or Hezbollah or organiza-
tions affiliated with these terrorist organizations. Deaths linked to terrorist incidents do
not trigger a judicial process, and in these cases social media announcements of martyrdom
were used when verified by other sources (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2010).
Demographic information about the offenders was collected, and their network affiliation
and the nature of the charges filed against them were also recorded.
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve 21
The literature on the age-crime relationship is well established (Hirschi and Gottfredson,
1983; Farrington, 1986). It is widely agreed that younger men (and to a lesser extent women)
are more likely to commit crimes—and, specifically, violent ones—because they value the
thrill and are more susceptible to peer group pressures, whereas older people are more likely
to consider the costs, including incarceration, and the loss of family and jobs (Farrington,
1986:235).
Terrorism is a violent crime, which suggests that the age-dependent drivers of the capacity
for violence may play a role, for example, physical strength, absence of familial obligations,
a propensity to discount risk. However, terrorism is also a political crime, and a political
awakening is a prerequisite. Thus the intrinsic connection between age and violent action
may be less robust in the case of terrorist crimes. There are reasons, therefore, to think that
violent terrorist crimes do not conform to the predictable age patterns of other types of
violent crime.
The study by Steffensmeier and his colleagues used time series data from the FBI’s UCR
or Uniform Crime Reports (Steffensmeier et al., 1989; Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1991).
The study was chosen because it is the most comprehensive and the most cited study
in the voluminous literature on the age-crime curve axiom. Steffensmeier estimated the
actual peak ages and parameters of the age-crime relationship for different types of violent
and nonviolent crimes. Offenders committing crimes related to weapons charges, assault,
and homicide—three of the four violent crimes against persons analyzed by Steffensmeier
et al.—are the most comparable to violent terrorist offenses (another category, violence
against family, was left out of the comparison).
Historically, the typical age at which violent crimes are perpetuated has gradually de-
clined. The UCR study found that, in 1940, the peak age for homicide offenders was 23,
and 30 the median. The year 1960 saw 24 and 27 as the peak and median, respectively, for
homicide. In 1980, the peak and median ages for homicide were 19 and 27, for weapons
charges 18 and 25, and 21 and 27 for assault. Overall, 1980 had a peak age of 18 and a me-
dian of 25. Between 1940 and 1980, the median age of violent offenders declined by four to
five years, contingent on the particular offense. Unfortunately, comparable data do not exist
for the most recent decades. Assuming the declining trend continued, it may be supposed
that the propensity for violent crimes in the 1990s, the starting point of our data for terrorist
offenders, peaked in the late teens and the median age of violent offenders was 24–25.1
A curvilinear relationship between age and crime appears to be a near-universal phe-
nomenon but the exact relationship between age and different types of crime varies.
Incidence rates in specific population groups and the particular ages at which offenders
are likely to become involved with crime have also been found to vary (Steffensmeier and
Streifel, 1991; Loeber et al., 2013). Social and geographical inequalities are sometimes
compounded, resulting in distinctly localized patterns (Fabio et al., 2011). Analogously,
we would expect terrorism to present a varied picture, driven by patterns of recruitment
and changing law enforcement environments.

Islamist Extremism in the United States

The data collection allow us to draw comparisons between American Hamas and Hezbol-
lah offenders and the Al Qaeda-inspired homegrown American offenders. The use of three
1
The terrorism offenses reported in our data took place between 1990 and the end of 2014. We were unable
to find a study replicating the analysis for more recent years, and the lack of updated data creates a minor
comparative problem, which shall be addressed later.
22 Social Science Quarterly
different groups gives us an opportunity to approximate an experimental case-control study
while controlling for the influence of different ideological streams and demographic bases
among the offenders. The three organizations all espouse variants of Islamist militancy and
endorse the use of terrorism. The geostrategic focus of Hamas and Hezbollah has prompted
them to attack U.S. installations in the Middle East and in other countries, but these two
groups have largely refrained from carrying out attacks against the U.S. homeland.
The first generation of Hezbollah and Hamas members settled in the United States was
composed of family men. Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, the leader of Hamas’ Political
Bureau, lived with his family first in Louisiana and then in northern Virginia between 1988
and his deportation in 1997. He was arrested in New York City in 1995 and was listed as a
specially designated terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department that same year. Hezbollah’s
arrival in the United States followed a similar path.2 Mohamed Youssef Hammoud, a
Hezbollah member since the age of 16, came to the United States in 1992 and married
(in sequence) several American women, while leading or assisting a fundraising ring in the
United States and Canada until his arrest in 2000.3
Al Qaeda was formed in 1988 but it did not emerge as the premier international terrorist
organization until the mid-1990s. The most significant threat from Sunni extremists based
in the United States came from the adherents of Omar Abdel Rahman, the Brooklyn-based
“Blind Sheikh” who was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center attack.4 Al Qaeda
spearheaded the shift to “homegrown” terrorist recruitment after the 9/11 attacks. (The
9/11 hijackers are excluded from the study, as are other foreign-directed attacks, e.g., the
failed attempt to bring down a plane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.) Al
Qaeda appeared to be dormant in the United States in the aftermath of the attacks, but
after 2008 “homegrown” adherents rapidly became the main threat to domestic security.
Today, there are important differences between the three organizations. The jihadists and
Hezbollah are at war with each other in Syria. Nevertheless, in the 1990s the groups
cooperated operationally, and individual operatives crossed over from one group to the
other with some regularity (Gunaratna, 2003).
We identified 43 conspiracies involving Hamas or Hezbollah operatives based in the
United States between the early 1990s and the present.5 Thirty four of these were asso-
ciated with Hezbollah and only nine with Hamas. Just four of the conspiracies involved
violent acts: Hezbollah and Hamas were each responsible for two. The single deadly in-
cident involving a Hamas-related shooting occurred in 1994 when two Brooklyn-based

2
Hezbollah was founded in the mid-1980s by Lebanese clerics living in Iran. It became the dominant Shiite
militant group in Lebanon in 1989 after a bloody internecine fight with the Amal movement, a secular Shiite
militia, which ended in 1989 (Norton, 2007:34). Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It was founded in 1987–1988 with support from Hezbollah and Iran. The Hamas leadership initially settled
in Damascus, Syria, but moved to Jordan after the escalation of the Sunni-Shia conflict after the onset in 2011
of the civil war in Syria.
3
Hammoud was convicted in U.S. court in 2003 on charges of funding terrorism. Several members of his
extended family who had also migrated to the United States were convicted as co-conspirators. His scheme
is estimated to have brought in at least $7 million for Hezbollah (see United States of America vs. Mohamed
Youssef Hammoud et al., 2000).
4
Egyptian Sunni extremists carried out a series of violent attacks in the United States in the 1990s. Meir
Kahane, a militant Brooklyn-based rabbi, was killed in 1990 by a member of the clique around Omar Abdel-
Rahman. The year 1993 is remembered for the first World Trade Center bombing but in January that year, a
Pakistani militant, Mir Qazi (a.k.a. Kasi), killed two CIA employees and wounded three in a shooting outside
the CIA Langley headquarters. Qazi is the only Islamist terrorist who has been subjected to execution following
conviction in a U.S. court.
5
A conspiracy, to be precise, is in the context of our research essentially one of two things: (1) an attack or
an incident-based arrest event; or (2) a plan to do something illegal related to terrorism. The incident count
includes actualized attacks and foiled incidents, and also financial terrorism, terrorist recruitment, and material
support for terrorism, as well as plots involving so-called lone wolves and sting operations.
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve 23
sympathizers targeted a bus carrying Hassidic students, in which one student died. The
other 39 plots involved various types of material support for terrorism. Of the 39 nonvi-
olent conspiracies, 32 involved fundraising by means of false charities, fraud, robbery, or
smuggling.
In contrast, a total of 150 Al Qaeda-inspired incidents were identified as based in and
targeting the United States. Nidal Malik Hasan the Fort Hood shooter, then 39 years old,
who in 2009 killed 13 and wounded more than 30 people, committed the most lethal
incident since the 9/11 attacks. Since then, the number of Americans recruited to AQ-
inspired groups has continued to grow. Most of the Al Qaeda-inspired incidents analyzed
happened after the 9/11 attacks. Since 2001, 71 plots involving violent attacks have been
revealed, of which 62 either failed or were foiled through preventive arrests. Fifty six of
these jihadist conspiracies centered on fundraising and material support for Al Qaeda and
affiliated organizations. Another eight involved recruitment rings that sent volunteers to
training camps and insurgencies abroad.
Arrests and convictions related to Hamas and Hezbollah have been stable over the
years but there has been a recent notable increase in the number of Al Qaeda-inspired
incidents. The balance between domestic attacks and arrests related to participation in
foreign insurgencies shifted after 2012, when a growing number of Americans traveled
or attempted to travel to Syria and on to Iraq to fight with the insurgent jihadist groups
there. The number of Americans estimated to be engaged in foreign insurgencies is now
greater than the number usually arrested in one year in connection with plots targeting
the United States (Zelin et al., 2013). Nevertheless, over 40 homegrown plots involving
sympathizers of Al Qaeda were disrupted between January 2011 and December 2014.
Only one plot—the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013—was carried out successfully.

Age, Cohorts, and Types of Terrorist Crime

Compared to the age distributions reported by Steffensmeier et al. based upon the
UCR data, terrorism offenders are generally older—often far older—than ordinary violent
criminals. The youngest terrorism offenders in our data set were 16–18 years old when
they were arrested, which put them inside the peak range for nonpolitical violent offenders.
The very young terrorism offenders are, however, atypical.
Terrorist movements are dedicated to political violence but in the day-to-day business of a
terrorist organization violent action is not always the first priority. To assess the relationship
between the age of terrorism offenders and violent terrorist incidents, the data were filtered
into nonviolent and violent terrorism offenses. Charges filed as part of indictments generally
clearly indicate the type of offense involved. The offenders were then assigned to one or
more types of plots based on the charges filed against them. Three categories of terrorism
offenses were distinguished: (1) violent attacks targeting the United States, (2) becoming a
foreign fighter, and (3) fundraising and material support for terrorism. A violent domestic
plot involved acts clearly intended to inflict physical harm upon others. Material support for
terrorism charges comprised actions aiming to supply a terrorist organization with money
or goods. (This category includes fundraisers.) For the purposes of this study, recruitment
plots were counted along with material support plots if the individual involved was not
also a foreign fighter. When an individual was charged with engaging in multiple types
of actions, each type of charge was counted as an observation. Individuals who were not
clearly associated with any domestic plots—violent or nonviolent—were excluded from
the data.
24 Social Science Quarterly
Few terrorists are arrested at the moment they commit their crimes. Many commit
multiple terrorist crimes before they die in the act of committing a terrorist offense or they
are arrested. In order to pin age to the commission of a terrorist crime, we had to establish
the first year an offender committed a verified terrorist act triggering law enforcement
involvement. It could be death in the pursuit of a terrorist act, an indictment or an arrest
on terrorism charges, or the individual’s designation as a terrorist by the U.S. government.
If an individual who traveled to an insurgency zone came back before carrying out any
domestic action, the year he or she started as a foreign fighter was used to indicate the date
of action, even if the individual was only later arrested for other terror-related offenses.
To assess the changes in the recruitment base over the 25 years analyzed, the data
were filtered into three cohorts to reflect key turning points in the evolution of domestic
terrorism. Cohort 1, the first group examined, consists of individuals who first were
identified by law enforcement (or died) in or before 2001, taking the September 11 attacks
as a turning point. Cohort 2 contains individuals identified or dead in 2002 through 2007.
Cohort 3 is composed of individuals whose terrorist actions occurred in and after 2008,
after online social media became a primary recruitment and communication tool. The
result is a detailed comparative matrix breaking the data down by group affiliation, type of
terrorism offense, and time cohort. Because of the small number of violent incidents related
to Hamas and the absence of such instances related to Hezbollah, the breakdown of the
data produced a number of empty cells or cells with too few cases to draw any conclusions
(see Table 1).
The comparison highlighted striking differences in the age profiles of the perpetrators
belonging to Hamas and Hezbollah on the one hand, and the jihadists on the other. The
median age of Hezbollah offenders is 37 at first arrest or police contact in the United States.
Hamas offenders are even older, with a median age of 43. The median age of the jihadists,
in contrast, was 27. It follows that terrorism is not strictly a youth crime.
The oldest Hezbollah offender was 64 years old at the time of arrest in the United States,
and the youngest 22. In the case of Hamas, the oldest offender was 59 and the youngest
23. However, although on balance by far the youngest, the jihadists exhibited the widest
age span, with almost 50 years between the oldest offender (64) and the youngest (16). A
principal difference between the jihadists and the other two groups is that the American
jihadists comprise several generations of offenders, whereas Hamas and Hezbollah (in the
United States) have largely failed to attract a new and younger generation of adherents.
The time cohort comparison further revealed growing disparities between the three
terrorist organizations. Over the years the jihadist offenders became younger. Those arrested
in or after 2008 are typically two years younger than the previous two cohorts of jihadists
(as indicated by the median age at arrest).
Hamas and Hezbollah offenders, meanwhile, are older and have become progressively
older. The most recent cohort of Hamas offenders arrested in or after 2008 was 12 years
older at arrest than Hamas operatives arrested before 9/11 (with a median age of 34 years
prior to 2001 and a median age of 46 in the last five years). Hezbollah’s adherents also aged
considerably, jumping from a median of 30 in the first cohort to 38 in the most recent
cohort. The aging profiles of members of Hamas and Hezbollah indicate that they have
continued to recruit from the same aging demographic bases that supported them 20 years
ago. The generational differences between these groups and the jihadists grew increasingly
significant. The median ages at arrest for the Hezbollah and Hamas offenders were, in the
post-2008 cohort, 38 and 47, respectively. In contrast, the median age of the jihadists was
25 in the same time period.
 TABLE 1
Median and Mean Ages at First Terrorism-Related Action by Organizational Affiliation and Cohort, 1990–2014

Median Peak Mean Standard deviation Skew Minimum Maximum n

Cohort All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All 1 2 3 All

All 29 28 32 28 23 23/27 22/27 21 31.6 30.1 33.6 30.5 10.3 7.9 10.6 11 0.8 1.3 0.6 0.9 16 16 16 16 64 59 64 64 572
Material 34 31 36 35 27 27/28 27/41 29 35.3 32.6 35.9 35.9 10 8.5 9.6 11 0.4 1.2 0.2 0.3 16 20 16 16 64 59 64 64 295
support
Violent acts 27 29 24.5 26 21 26 22 21 29.5 30.2 29.2 29.2 9.6 7 11 10.1 1.4 1.2 1.5 1.2 17 19 18 17 63 56 63 58 203
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve

Foreign 24 27 22 22 19 27 22 19/20 25.1 27.7 24.8 23.2 6.5 6.7 7.4 5.4 1.2 0.9 1.9 1 16 16 16 16 51 51 50 43 186
fighters
Hamas 43.5 34 45 46 23 23 45 42 41 35.5 42.7 45.8 10 12.5 6.8 5.2 −0.4 0.6 −0.8 0.6 23 23 30 39 59 59 51 58 44
Material 44 36 45 46 23/47b 23 45 42 42.3 37.8 42.7 45.8 9.3 12.9 6.8 5.2 −0.5 0.4 −0.8 0.6 23 23 30 39 59 59 51 58 40
support
Violent acts 30 26 34 – 23 23 34 – 31.7 31.2 34 – 9 10 – – 0.3 0.4 – – 23 23 34 – 44 44 34 – 6
Foreign – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
fightersa
Hezbollah 37 30 37 38 37 24/28 37 37 36.8 30.7 36.4 40.7 9.2 5.6 8.6 10.1 0.7 0.1 0.5 0.7 20 22 20 27 64 40 64 64 120
Material 37 30.5 37 37.5 37 24 37 37 36.8 30.9 36.5 40.2 9.1 5.7 8.7 9.9 0.7 0 0.4 0.8 20 22 20 27 64 40 64 64 116
support
Violent – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
actsa
Foreign – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
fightersa
Jihadists 27 27 27 25 21/24 27 22 21 28.8 28.7 31 27.3 9.4 6.6 11 9.1 1.3 1.1 1 1.4 16 16 16 16 63 56 63 61 402
Material 30 28.5 31.5 29 27 27 33 21/24 31.7 29.6 33.5 30.7 9.6 5 10.4 9.9 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.9 16 20 16 16 61 40 55 61 133
support
Violent acts 27 29 24 26 21 26/27 22 21 29.3 30.1 29.1 28.8 9.5 6.7 11.2 9.6 1.4 1.4 1.5 1.3 17 19 18 17 63 56 63 58 194
Foreign 24 27 22 22 19 27 22 19/20 25 27.7 24.5 23.2 6.5 6.8 7.2 5.4 1.3 0.9 2.2 1 16 16 16 16 51 51 50 43 183
fighters
a Too few observations to report.
b Multiple peaks: 23, 34, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47.
25
26 Social Science Quarterly
The generational transition coincided with the shift from an immigrant-origin social
base in the United States to a “homegrown” base on the part of the Al Qaeda-inspired
groups. This was not the case for the two other Islamist extremist groups. It is notable that
rejuvenation of the jihadists accelerated after 2008, coinciding with the transition to online
social media proselytizing and organizing, which evidently enabled Al Qaeda to reach and
mobilize a younger segment of Americans. In conclusion, violent terrorism offenders are
generally older than ordinary violent offenders, by five years or more. The trend in recent
years, however, is to younger offenders.

The Age-Crime Distribution Across Types of Terrorism Offenses

The organizations’ age profiles may tell us a great deal about their capacity for orches-
trating violent domestic attacks. Hezbollah and Hamas have older members who commit
nonviolent crimes. Older offenders, 40 and above—with a few exceptions—generally par-
ticipate only in nonviolent plots. Participation in foreign insurgencies drops off significantly
after the age of 36. Few men aged 40 or above are known to have gone off to fight. Oldest,
typically, were the fundraisers and charity managers, whose median age was 34—fully seven
years older than the offenders engaged in conspiracies involving violent conduct. However,
fundraising and material support for terrorism involves all age groups. The youngest and
the oldest of the offenders engaged with fundraising and other nonviolent support activities
were nearly 50 years apart, making this an intergenerational activity (see Table 1, row 4).
The prevalence of older offenders belonging to Hamas and Hezbollah indicates that
each of the three groups has distinct risk profiles. Hezbollah and Hamas adherents are
significantly older with medians of 37 and 44, respectively, for offenses related to material
support of terrorism. In the case of Hamas, the presence of a negatively skewed distribution
toward older offenders indicates a distinctly middle-aged risk profile. Yet although the
jihadists are generally younger, 50 percent of their fundraisers are above the age of 30.
The younger age profile for violent offenders in recent year—2008 through 2014—is
explained by the increase in the number of far younger jihadists as compared with the
two other groups of Islamist terrorism offenders. The post-2008 cohort had over 50 more
foreign fighters than the previous one, and the age range was seven years less.
Recent offenders include teenagers.6 In 2012, the 19-year-old Shelton Thomas Bell and
an unnamed 16-year-old co-conspirator traveled to Jordan and attempted to go to Yemen
where they hoped to join Ansar al-Shariah, a terrorist organization aligned with Al Qaeda.
They were arrested in Jordan and returned to the United States (United States of America
vs. Shelton Thomas Bell, 2015). In December 2014, two brothers (19, 16) and their sister
(17) from Chicago were caught in an attempt to fly to Istanbul and then go fight in Syria.
They were recruited by a 22-year-old British foreign fighter based in Syria known as “Abu
Qa’qa,” who was contacted by the sister via Twitter (Sullivan, 2014).
To better assess and visualize the age-crime distribution, the terrorist offender data were
graphed as a frequency distribution showing the offenders’ age distribution by the type of
plot with which they were associated. The resulting graph is displayed in Figure 1. The
mean ages of the offenders by type of offense are indicated in the graph.

6
An incident involving three girls from Colorado (two sisters [17, 15] and a friend [16]) was not included
here. They were caught in Istanbul on the way to Syria and sent home to the United States, where they were
questioned by the FBI. Their desire to go to Syria appears to have been romantically motivated rather than
motivated by a desire to fight with the insurgency.
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve 27
FIGURE 1
Frequency Distribution of American “Homegrown” Terrorists by Age and Plot Type

The age ranges for the three types of terrorist offenses are far broader than those of
ordinary violent criminals but vary significantly for the different types of terrorist activity.
(The age spread is indicated by the width of the curves in Figure 1.)
In the case of nonviolent support crimes the age spread is 50 years, with most offenders
falling between the ages of 23.7 and 44.3 (Table 1, row 2). The peak age for committing
nonviolent support crimes is 27, whereas the peak for committing violent domestic attacks
is 21, and 19 for becoming a foreign fighter. The age profiles of jihadists who become
foreign fighters or carry out violent domestic attack crimes have declined, converging on
the age profiles of ordinary violent offenders. The median age of foreign fighters is 22,
and 26 is the median age of offenders who commit violent domestic offenses (see Table
1, bottom rows). In the case of the foreign fighters the age spread narrowed to a standard
deviation of 5.4 years. This indicates that a clearer age-crime curve has emerged in recent
years for Americans who join foreign jihadist insurgencies. Since 2008, 68 percent of the
foreign fighters were between the ages of 17.8 and 28.6, as indicated by one standard
deviation to both the left and right (two-tailed distribution).
At the other tail end of the distribution we find a few older men—some of them
grandfathers—who have attempted to commit domestic attacks. These men were not
among the most fearsome would-be terrorists in the data set. None of the older violent
offenders succeeded in their endeavors. They were all caught in law enforcement sting
operations. A group of Guyanese men living in the United States was arrested in 2007. They
plotted, among other things, to blow up fuel tanks at the John F. Kennedy International
Airport in Queens, NY. The men ranged in age from 56 to 64. One of them was a convert to
Islam from Catholicism and had received religious instruction in Iran in Shi’a Islam before
becoming a Sunni extremist.7 Another example of a recently radicalized mature terrorist is
Terry Lee Loewen, 58, who was arrested in December 2013. He was charged with planning
to commit a suicide attack against an airport in Wichita, Kansas. In some ways Loewen

7
They belonged to a Guyanese group, Jamaat al Muslimeen. The group is idiosyncratic and is not easily
classified in terms of its affiliation to the international terrorist organizations or, more broadly, within the
Shia-Sunni schism.
28 Social Science Quarterly
was no different from the recently radicalized youths. He was a fan of Anwar al-Awlaki and
the website RevolutionMuslim.com and was in possession of Inspire, an online magazine
produced by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Paradoxically, even if the age ranges are wide, the age-crime curve relationship is solid—
younger men commit violent terrorist acts while older men (and a few women) provide
nonviolent support for terrorism. A one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA)
was conducted to compare the plot association classifications on age at first arrest for
foreign fighters, violent offenders who target the United States, and adherents associated
with fundraising and material support for terrorism.8 A t-test for the significance of the
age variable showed that the mean age of offending on charges of material support for
terrorism and for becoming a foreign fighter is significantly different from the overall age
mean.9 In sum, different age profiles exist for violent and nonviolent terrorist activities.
Although there is a relatively solid age-crime relationship for violent terrorism offenses,
the age parameters are distinct from the well-established age-crime curve for nonpolitical
violent crimes. The UCR study by Steffensmeier et al. set the peak age for violent offenses
(all) in the 1980s at 18 and the median age at 25. This is similar to the profile of recent
violent terrorism offenders, but terrorism offenders typically begin their careers at an older
age than common criminals and keep going far longer. The “onset” age (defined as the age at
which terrorist criminality first appears) varies greatly between the violent and nonviolent
terrorism offenders. However, engagement before the age of 16 is still rare among the
terrorism offenders. A long, right-sided tail of older, mostly nonviolent outliers skews the
overall distribution. Yet even among the jihadists, who are generally younger than the other
two groups, nonviolent offenders are older than the violent offenders by about 10 years on
average.
The picture becomes clearer when we consider how a long tail of a few older offenders
skews the age statistics. “Skew” is a measure of the shape of a distribution and shows the
extent to which the distribution is asymmetrical (Steffensmeier et al., 1989:820). A skew of
zero is found in a perfect, normal distribution. The appeal of becoming a foreign fighter to
the younger crowd is indicated by the skew toward younger offenders. Violent offenders and
foreign fighters had skews of 1.4 and 1.2, respectively. These make for very asymmetrical
skews with a large grouping for younger ages, and a long tail for older offenders. The skew
for terror fundraising offenses was 0.4, approximating a nearly symmetrical distribution.
Jihadists were the most positively skewed toward younger offenders—meaning that half of
the Al Qaeda-inspired offenders fall into a narrower and younger age range.
The role played by age in the propensity for violent and nonviolent incidents may be
more clearly assessed by creating a simple probability model based upon percentiles. The
data were parsed in a cumulative distribution ranked by percentile increments of 10 percent
and the median age for each decile was calculated. Let us say, as a thought experiment, if we
want to target 80 percent of the risk population what age range should we worry about? Or
is 90 percent the threshold? Parsed this way it becomes apparent that some degree of age
profiling of violent offenders may be reliable. The results are shown in Table 2, reported
by category of violent versus nonviolent offenses.
The probability approach helps narrow down the risk age ranges for violent offenders.
Ignoring the oldest 10 percent of outliers enables us to estimate limit values with reasonable

8
The result of the analysis is: F(3, 568) = 59.36, p = 0.00005. With the probability of F (the ratio of
explained variance to error), there are statistically significant differences between the age at first terrorist action
and plot type at p < 0.0001.
9
The results of the analyses are: t(570) = −9.71, p < 0.00005 for material support; t(570) = 3.6,
p < 0.0003 for violent attacks; and t(570) = 11.64, p < 0.00005.
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve 29
TABLE 2
Percentiles for Age at Time of First Terrorism Action by Plot Type Listed by Deciles (10 Percent)

Decile (1–9) All types of action Material support Violent acts Foreign fighter

1st 20 23 20 18
2nd 23 26.2 22 20
3rd 24 28 23 21
4th 27 31.4 25 22
5th 29 34 27 24
6th 32 37 29 25
7th 36 40 32 27
8th 40 44 35 29
9th 47 49.4 44 35

certainty. The propensity for becoming a foreign fighter drops off sharply in the late 20s.
Assessing the age range probabilities of engaging in violent domestic acts is trickier. The
median age for the eighth decile is 35, meaning that we need to keep individuals who are
in their mid-30s in the picture as high risk even if we are willing to ignore the last ninth
decile of older outliers.
In conclusion, our results indicate that the French police were justified in using age as a
criterion for assessing the risk posed by the Kouachi brothers but should not have ruled out
the brothers as risks based upon their age. Men in their early 30s and mid-30s continue to
pose a high risk of committing violent domestic attacks. There may be several reasons why
those who carry out domestic attacks are older. Experience is one. Going abroad to fight
is often a precursor to carrying out a domestic attack. Militants who go abroad sometimes
return to carry out a domestic attack. It may also be that that radicalized individuals
who are older experience obstacles to traveling abroad—for example, the foreign terrorist
organization may not want them—and instead carry out a domestic attack. A special vein in
the “homegrown” population consists of individuals who have radicalized in prison or have
other types of social trauma behind them, for example, drug abuse. They are often older
and tend not to go abroad before doing something. Therefore, the risk group for domestic
attacks is far broader demographically. But there is another very important consideration.
Terrorists are motivated by ideology. In consequence, they are not driven by the same
motivations driving ordinary criminals.
As an experiment, we created a regression model using the historical data to estimate the
probability for becoming involved with violent domestic terrorist acts. Three risk factors
were used: having been convicted of a violent criminal offense before becoming radicalized,
having been a foreign fighter, or being within the age range of 17–35. Together the three
factors accounted for 91 percent of the jihadists who have perpetrated a violent domestic
attack. The analysis showed that the three variables in combination provided a highly
statistically significant risk assessment model for anticipating who is likely to commit a
violent domestic terror attack.10
It is not surprising that the model accurately predicted—or rather postdicted—outcomes,
as everyone in the data set is a known terrorist and the outcome options are limited: violent
or nonviolent terrorist incidents. What this study demonstrates is that these are relevant

10
The results of the analyses are: F(13, 222) = 60.16, p = 0.00005. Previous criminality coefficient =
1.8, foreign fighter coefficient = −1.5, and the age range coefficient = 1.0. Fifty-one individuals had prior
criminality, 60 were foreign fighters, and 159 were aged 17–35.
30 Social Science Quarterly
variables that may be used in a risk assessment—and also that potential perpetrators in
their early to mid-30s should not be ruled out as potentially violent terrorists based on age
alone.
However, prior nonpolitical criminality and being in the age range both have a positive
effect in the model, whereas being a foreign fighter has a negative effect. The finding
suggests that although many former foreign fighters carry out domestic attacks, becoming
a foreign fighter or a domestic terrorist are generally alternative pathways among violent
extremists (Hegghammer, 2013). Several explanations for the finding come to mind. Some
of those who go abroad to fight never return, either because they stay on with the foreign
terrorist organization or because they die abroad. Others were arrested either on their way
to fight abroad or on their return, preventing them from having an opportunity to carry
out a domestic attack. Nonetheless, 29.9 percent of all the perpetrators of a domestic attack
previously fought abroad or went abroad looking to join a foreign terrorist organization.
Comparative statistics from Europe suggest a stronger correlation between becoming
a foreign fighter and becoming a perpetrator of a domestic attack (Klausen, 2014). The
reason may be that some European countries have been slow to make joining jihadist groups
in Syria and Iraq a criminal act. If accurate, we may infer that law enforcement tactics are
an independent variable in the risk models used to assess domestic policing priorities. It is
also possible that if more people are arrested before going abroad to fight, then those who
stay at home may come to pose a greater risk to domestic security.

Conclusion: Age and Experience as Risk Factors

Given good data, it is possible to establish reasonably specific probabilistic age ranges for
assessing who is most likely to become a violent terrorism offender. However, the precise
age values reported here should be treated with caution. Within the 25-year period covered
by the data, terrorist recruitment related to the Islamist insurgent groups has undergone
significant changes that are only partially reflected in the analysis. Evidence-based indicators
must reflect the specific characteristics of the subject population likely to engage in terrorist
acts.
Nonetheless, a few conclusions may be drawn: (1) relative youth is an important risk
factor for violent terrorism but not for nonviolent terrorism offenses; (2) while the age-crime
curve axiom applies to violent terrorism offenders much as it does to nonpolitical violent
criminals, terrorism offenders are generally older—and in some cases, far older—than
nonpolitical violent criminals and commit violent crimes over a far wider age range; and (3)
violent terrorism offenders—domestic and those seeking to go abroad—are drawn primarily
from men aged between 18 and 32, with the propensity for violent offenses dropping off
after 35. In recent years the peak age for going abroad to fight has dropped significantly—
from 27 before the 9/11 attacks to youths aged 19–20. Moreover, no evidence-based risk
assessment could have anticipated that in the last several years a large number of young
women would declare allegiance to the Islamic State and its violent objectives, and pack
up and leave to join the group.
Why are foreign fighters significantly younger than other terrorism offenders? And
why are they become increasingly younger? The explanation may be that the promise of
travel and the romanticized view of battle projected in jihadist propaganda are particularly
attractive to this group. Social media proselytizing is also widely assumed to have shifted
recruitment toward a younger generation of potential consumers of terrorist propaganda.
But a simpler explanation is that the option of joining a foreign terrorist group is available
to the young on a scale not seen before. The barriers to entry have been lowered by supply-
The Terrorist Age-Crime Curve 31
side factors ranging from social media to the growth of domestic networks linked to the
international terrorist organizations. The shifting patterns of domestic flows of volunteers
to join the insurgency in Syria and the Islamic State’s new “caliphate” are driven by a new
recruitment strategy on the part of the terrorist organization. Western youths—male and
female—are used to colonize territory seized. Therefore, the essential skills required are
minimal: their youth and their inexperience in fighting and in religious doctrine are not a
disability.
Recent policy efforts as part of the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) agenda have
focused on pedagogical risk prevention, primarily in schools. Reports from Europe are
that children as young as nine will be instructed in the dangers of terrorist recruitment.
Conceivably, school intervention programs may be effective 10 years from now, provided
today’s nine-year-olds retain what they learned when they reach the at-risk age between 19
and 21. The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum already asks visitors in its
concluding section of the museum exhibit to consider what kinds of comments they might
report, and to whom, if they feared someone they knew was planning some kind of attack.
More immediately we need to figure out how to reach young adults in their late teens and
early to mid-20s and dissuade them from embracing terrorism.

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