Two professors from the University of Maryland, College Park created their own Global Terror Database as a means of sifting through information on terrorist attacks to create a quantitative report that suggests government reactions to terrorism can be more dangerous than terrorism itself.

The report, “Terror Research: Government Deterrence Strategies of Limited Effectiveness,” was headed by criminology professor Gary LaFree, professor Laura Dugan and graduate student Raven Korte as part of a works grant from the Homeland Security Department-funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, housed at the university.

“We know terrorist groups don’t last unless there is a base of support,” LaFree said. “And when governments overreact … make false arrests and kill civilians, that fuels support.”

Using multivariate regressions, a description of how multiple variables change as another variable changes, on 2,603 IRA strikes in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1992, the report determined whether future risk of attack during this period increased, decreased or remained the same after each of the five major policy actions taken by the British.