Lone Wolf Essay

Lone wolf terrorist are identified as a single person, who seek to or carry out attacks individually, are not associated with organized groups (Hamm & Spaaij, 2015). These individuals pose significant threats to the world because they are both unpredictable in their actions and they operate entirely alone. Scholars and policy-makers agree that lone world terrorist attacks are posing large threats, as well as increasing financial, human, and social costs (Danzell & Montanez). It is because they remain under the radar, preform and increasing number of attacks and are hard to identify that law enforcement and government officials have difficulty deterring attacks by such individuals.

While it is debated if a lone wolf is merely a construct of the media and of radical political actors, rather than a social science or a legal

Scholars agree that lone wolf terrorist are often unpredictable in their actions because their plan is uniquely theirs and not backed by supporting organizations or networks. Additionally, they tend to be individuals that run under the radar of law enforcement

Their motivations are conceived and directed by the individual without any direction from an outside command or hierarchy. This creates a needle in a haystack type situation when looking for specific individuals out of billions who pose a threat to the safety of others. This is important because “in 2011, US Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano indicated that lone wolf attackers with no ties to extremist networks were on the increase (Danzell & Montanez, 2015).” It is critical, that as terrorism dynamics are changing, scholars, law enforcement and governments alter their approaches to identify and eliminate threats in new and innovative