Potential of Situational Crime Prevention as a Mitigation Strategy against Improvised Explosive Devices Targeting British Army Personnel
Potential of Situational Crime Prevention as a Mitigation Strategy against Improvised Explosive Devices Targeting British Army Personnel

Summary/Abstract: Terrorism represents a significant threat across the globe where the improvised explosive device (IED) remainsone of the most prevalent weapons of choice. Multiple organisations across UK Defence are legally responsible for mitigatingor addressing various elements of such behaviour, including the British Army which plays a vital role in countering the IEDthreat. However, navigating the context through implementation of mitigation methods can be challenging due to the hostileenvironments the British Army operates in along with an evolving IED threat. Therefore, understanding this was critical,particularly when such an aspect has hardly been empirically researched and discussed. This study was part of a Master’sdegree at the University of Leicester, aiming to fill the gap by investigating whether situational crime prevention (SCP)could be effective in reducing IED targeting opportunities that was achieved by applying a mixed method approach, andselecting an exploratory research design. Such strategy helped to garner opinions of 23 British Army personnel and it wasrepresented through a survey, the main research method used and snowball sampling applied. The answers of participantswere thematically analysed, including the usage of descriptive analysis. All of this was supported with following ethicalprinciples that were met before, during and after the data collection and the analysis took place. The findings revealedthat SCP has potential in reducing the IED threat when applied in a layered format, despite the fact that participants’opinions differed when it came to the effectiveness of SCP within a specific context. Hence, further research into theintricacies of why adaptation to IED counter measures alters cost/benefit analysis has been recommended to improve futurecounter IED methods and secure the personal safety of British Army personnel. This involves proposing semi-structuredinterviews, and an evidence-base stance that could be applied when examining the potential of SCP as a mitigationstrategy in the future to address some limitations of the methodology and theoretical framework selected for this study.

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