This weekend the NPR radio show This American Life rebroadcast an episode about one of the first people convicted in the FBI’s war on terrorism, Hemant Lakhani, in part as a follow up to this spring’s arrest of four men from Newburgh, NY, for plotting to bomb a synagogue in Riverdale, NY and to shoot down military planes. The story in both cases is largely the same: FBI informants play a major role facilitating (encouraging?) the alleged terrorist plot, including eventually supplying the (fake) weapons. The radio broadcast is fascinating; Rolling Stone also had an interesting in depth investigation of this general practice about a year and a half ago.
As a citizen, I find these kind of stories very troubling. I understand the pressure the FBI is under to keep America safe, but it seems that the kind of people rounded up in these sorts of operations are hardly the ones who could actually credibly threaten to carry out or facilitate (in the case of Lakhani) terrorist activity. So the direct effect of these actions on US national security seems likely to be negligible.
As a social scientist, though, I wondered whether there could be some sort of indirect deterrent effect going on here. Sure, the government might not really be arresting viable terrorists in these kind of sting operations, but perhaps there is some sort of indirect effect, whereby the government is at least planting seeds of doubt in the minds of future would-be terrorists that they could be infiltrated by government informants. This led me to wonder where there was any research out there that could be brought to bear on this question. Empirically, do we know anything about whether increasing the possibility of informants being present raises costs to those in criminal enterprises? It would seem that studies from the drug trade might be able to shed some light on this question. Theoretically, are there any papers out there suggesting just how high the probably of infiltration would need to be to credibly disrupt operations of a terrorist cell?
My suspicion is that the gulf between what Rolling Stone called the pathetic and hapless jihadist and serious terrorists working with or for Al Qeada is too wide for what happens to the former to have much effect on the activities of the latter, but would be interested in whether there is any existing research that could shed light on this question.
[As an aside, for those following the NJ gubernatorial election campaign, the prosecuting attorney in the Lakhani case was none other than Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for governor.]
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Having spent the last few years studying the research concerning the death penalty and whether or not it deters murder I have to say that the literature is pretty consistent. We don’t have good evidence to show that the death penalty deters murders. I can’t imagine it would be any different in other types of crimes. In this example, terrorism, this research seems specifically applicable, as it does involve murder.
I’m actually of the opinion that penalties in general have very little deterrent effect at all.
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