Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, Vol 12(1), Mar 2025, 1-22; doi:10.1037/tam0000223
Frontline law enforcement, police, and security personnel of various backgrounds have the challenging task to identify extremists who have a high risk for committing violent acts, describe driving risk trajectories, prioritize the use of scarce resources, and develop individualized risk management plans. In this line of work, risk and threat assessment instruments are frequently used to standardize the development of individual risk profiles and guide decision-making processes. The scope of this article is to provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art risk and threat assessment instruments for violent extremism by conducting a systematic literature research. Comparisons of the following instruments’ characteristics, development, application, and validation are reported: Violent Extremism Risk Assessment, Version 2–Revised (VERA-2R), Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18), Extremism Risk Guidelines 22+ (ERG 22+), Multi-Level Guidelines Version 2 (MLG Version 2), Islamic Radicalization (IR-46), Structured Assessment of Violent Extremism (SAVE), Radicalisation Awareness Network Center of Excellence Returnee 45 (RAN CoE Returnee 45), Regelbasierte Analyse potentiell destruktiver Täter zur Einschätzung des akuten Risikos—islamistischer Terrorismus (in English: rule-based analysis of potentially destructive perpetrators to assess the acute risk—Islamist terrorism; RADAR-iTE), and Investigative Search for Graph-Trajectories (INSiGHT). Most instruments are applied to violent extremism in general without specification of ideological phenomena; however, some are specifically developed for Islamism or right-wing extremism or certain subtypes of extremists like returnees. The number of factors, factor structures, and final risk evaluation varied substantially between instruments. The development of the instruments was regularly based on scientific theories and empirical data analysis approaches. However, data about the predictive validity was seldom available. Finally, future challenges and existing uncertainties within the approaches were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
